


The Head and The Heart

by selinawrites



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art, Artist Phil Lester, Artists, Cute Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Happy Ending, Lawyer Dan Howell, Lawyers, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, No Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Plantboy Phil Lester, Plants, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Spaceboy Dan Howell, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-05-25 02:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 41,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14966957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selinawrites/pseuds/selinawrites
Summary: The seemingly heartless workaholic Dan Howell never expected to find love. A divorce lawyer by trade, he knew all the cynics of the heart, all the secrets of the soul. He never expected one night looking up at the stars to awaken the reckless abandon and rebellion he never felt before, Dan Howell never expected to find love, nonetheless in a plant shop of all places whilst making impulsive decisions and unlocking truths he never fathomed to believe.





	1. As impulsive as a teenage boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the seventh rewrite of a short story I wrote for school turned slowburn fanfiction. Enjoy!  
> Note: This is a work of fiction and therefore some portrayals of lawyers in this story may not be 100% factually accurate. I am not a lawyer, I'm just a girl in high school.

 By the time Dan Howell arrived at his two-bedroom flat in the evening, the sky seemed to be cracked open and shattered with stars. Dan never prided himself in spending time wondering about the big secrets of the universe, and yet there was something else that begged him to watch with wild eyes. There was something strange about the sky on this night, something that lured Dan and tantalised him. Dan was never a big fan of stars, the sky, or anything theoretical but as he stood outside his grubby flat on the right side of the road opened something inside of him, something hungry and alive. His days at the law firm in which he worked at were long and arduous, the nine to five job that everyone spends their youth running from just to end up back to as if it were their safety net all along. Most of the day Dan spent typing endless documents that followed somewhat the same format, attending Skype calls as he pretended to seem interested and answering text messages from ignorant clients.

 

He was struck with a wave of lethargy and felt drowsy under the blanket of the night. On a day-to-day basis Dan lived for his work. On the weekends was no different, his workspace just transported from a boxed in cubicle to his lofty flat, incessantly typing away at the same expensive word processor. The air was cool and inviting, as he trudged quietly up the staircase after a long day of work. Dan’s job never particularly tired him out, it never weighed on him as if he had the weight of the world on him. His posture was poor and had a slight slouch, but not in the hunchback way that his coworkers stood, as if their job weighed on them. Dan didn’t particularly love being a lawyer, but it felt like a passion project for him to pit his heart and soul into. It was a good distraction from the rest of the world, and if he just closed his eyes and did what he was good at, Dan could have taken on the whole world if he pleased. He wasn’t the most voracious reader or the most avid writer, but Dan gave his everything into his work, he put in the effort and work he did every single day to be the best of the best.

His arms felt tired after lugging around boxes full of legal documents from his workday. His mother had pleaded him to come over for the long weekend, but he had a case to work on, after being relentlessly peer pressured by his coworkers to cover just one case for them. He knew that he was being taken advantage of, since his coworkers knew that he was the worlds' largest workaholic. Dan had already gotten his train tickets purchased and his itinerary planned when he was all of a sudden swamped with work that wasn‘t even his. They just knew that Dan was never one to pass up a case, not when working was like a drug to him, stronger than any patch of nicotine. His work was addictive, providing him with a distraction he so desperately longed for in his youth.

Dan was never in the habit of checking his landline phone, let alone for voicemails. The only reason he kept the landline phone was because his mother was the only one who ever used it, the only one who sent him voicemails that sent shivers down his spine and made his heart split in two. The latest one made Dan’s two bedroom flat seem empty and hollow as it resounded throughout the nearly untouched space with a dull echo. “Please, Daniel.” His mother asked him over the crackly voicemail she left on his landline. “Your family misses you, it’s time you come home.” Hearing his mother’s pleas almost made Dan feel compelled to even visit for a day, because his mother only sounded so somber over the intercom speaker. Every moment Dan had with his mother was littered with her passion and spirit. He wanted to go back to his small town, back to the town where everyone knew his name, and yet there was something that always settled in the pit of his stomach when his mother talked to him about returning back home. His mother was not a woman who held so much sadness in her. She carried the light and the spirit with her wherever she went. His mother was kind and funny and understood Dan’s sense of humor. It was only in the secret of the night, when she sent sad and empty voicemails to the son that never answered did she reveal her true colours.

Dan was going to go back to his hometown last long weekend — he truly was. It had been years since he stepped foot in his childhood home, but something work related had came up unexpectedly, the peer pressure from the Cyber Crimes unit. Dan was waiting for his tea to steep in the breakroom as he eavesdropped on the gaggle of lawyers gathered around in a tightly knit circle. He could only hear their conversations in tiny parts, but Dan knew that they were talking about their plans for the weekend.

“Oi, Howell.” One of the attorneys hollered once he realized that Dan was trying his hardest to overhear their conversation. Dan sighed exasperatedly, he knew that they were years older than he was, but some of them sounded just like the jocks and bullies he tried to run away from in his youth. “Any plans for the long weekend?” He asked Dan, clad with a thick Irish accent.

Dan tried to seem more interested in his Earl Grey tea bag. “Nope.” He said, stirring in the milk. “Probably just gonna get a head start on the other cases I have lined up.” He wanted to say that  _well, he was visiting his family for the first time since he graduated University,_ but he was also planning to do some work from his mother’s kitchen table.

 

 

It was at that moment did the attorney’s eyes light up as if he had won the lottery. He was old and wise and yet had the gall to manipulate Dan. “Oh! If you’re gonna start some files, do you mind drafting something for Cyber Crimes?” He asked, pulling out a cream coloured file folder that Dan didn’t notice initially. It was stamped with bright, blue ink with the words _unresolved_ staring at Dan.

Dan opened his mouth in protest, but the group was gone before he even had a chance to read the briefing. Even though he was going to start doing some work over the weekend, he never prided himself in covering for others’ cases to prove his intellectual prowess as many in the law firm so often did. 

He decided that it was for the better. Dan found himself working at such an efficient rate sometimes, drawing up multiple court orders and the final papers for child custody within the hour. He conceded that he would begin the summary of events for his colleague and be done with plenty of time before his train left. What Dan didn’t account for however, was that his client was unequivocally guilty for identity theft. He shouldn't have even reluctantly agreed to help the lawyers down in Cyber Crimes on his one day off that seemed to only occur once in a blue moon. Once more, his thoughts seemed to eat him alive. On the nights when Dan could feel himself spiralling, he would make himself a cup of tea and rock silently in the creaky chair, but his soul was tired and it begged to pry open the curtains and unlock the hinge on the window to catch a whiff of late-night petrichor and early-morning moonlight. Serendipitous starlight. He was tired, and lay down in bed, falling into a dreamless sleep. In the morning when he wakes, the room smells like sunlight and warmth. It smells of his childhood home and his greater need for independence. The open windows, the yawning curtains… it feels safe. It feels safe in the unfamiliar sort of way that made the hairs on the nape of Dan’s neck stand up and prickle uncomfortably. He slams the curtains shut and sterilises his room after a brief moment of languishing in the moment and sprays the room with the alcohol disinfectant he bought from the hospital supply store.

But now, as he taps his scuffed leather shoe against the cool marble floor with his job in jeopardy, Dan feels like he's the convict. As Dan read through the defendant’s file, he ended up following a rabbit hole of Internet crimes that Dan felt poorly unqualified for. It was only days later when Dan issued his official statement that he was backing out of the deal, and it may have upset more than one of his higher-ups. It was the Monday morning a week later from his strange epiphany and his stranger hunger for the stars, and he had been sitting out of his boss’ office for an impossible amount of time. The rumour mill had been stewing the latest gossip that he was facing probation time for unexpectedly backing out of a multi-million pound deal. In his seven years, plus the one year internship he spent at the law firm he still worked at, Dan had never taken a sick day or a vacation off, dedicating all of his time to his work. Somewhere along the way people decided to mistake his hard work for passion, as if anyone could ever be passionate about the logistics of divorce. It was only now when there was real true fear coursing through his veins did he want to do something rash and irrational like faking calling in sick. He already had his explanation armed in his tongue, the fact that he was a divorce lawyer covering for a criminal investigations and yet, the fear made him feel ferociously alive.

Separating Dan between himself and his fate lay an impossibly thick soundproof glass wall, where muffled voices on the other side of the wall make him feel like a scolded child in a principal's office. For the first time since he was hailed down to the office, Dan was only now seriously considered what would happen if he lost his job. He pondered on the absurdity of the situation, getting in trouble over a Cyber Crimes case. Hell, it wasn’t even Dan’s trade to be a criminal investigator. A case against identity theft made him feel more like a detective and less like a lawyer which in turn made him feel way out of his depth. He was outside of the office and was hunched over texting at his phone frantically at his clients who wanted to schedule last-minute hearings and consultations, even just for him to be a mediator. Even when Dan didn’t need to be on his phone contacting his clients, he always found himself glued to his phone aimlessly browsing social media. On his free time, Dan always found himself on his phone. There was not a minute in the day he was not on a piece of technology, refreshing his social media. Any moment in which he was not making the most of his time felt like wasted time to him, as if the time was slipping through his fingers like water.

After thirty-six minutes the officials shuffled out of the meeting room with clipboards in hand. “Mister Howell?” His boss’ gruff voice muttered as he opened the sliding door, towering his large figure over Dan’s poorly slouched stature. They had hailed him down to the office at the end of the hall only hours before he clocked out for the day. His day so far had been comprised of menial tasks, things that he could have put on hold for another day but still needed to be accomplished. His time at the law firm had made Dan a master of rehearsing a face that was the right mix of nonplussed and intrigued. He was working on a bunch of cases, but they seemed to come far and thin between each other. 

After one couple was happily divorced thanks to Dan, he would be lucky if he got another one within the week. He was just about to close a case on infidelity when he had to stop his work midway. He would not stop his work for anyone. He would not stop his work for his mother, or for his obnoxious niece and nephews, or for the florist down the road who always greeted him good morning while he spoke tersely to his colleagues on his wireless AirPods. Eventually his mother set his dinner in front of his desk instead of the dining room, his niece went to play with the other uncles, and the florist watered the crocus on the far side of the shop. That was how things were. He needed to complete his work. He needed to do his work well, and how can he do his work well with all the distractions of every day life? Dan had considered in investing in a pair of industrial-grade noise cancelling earphones.

Dan stood up and smoothed out his suit, crisp and well ironed without a flaw in sight. His boss waved him into his office, and Dan took a shaky step into the office, as he examined the room with a fine toothed comb. He had only ever been in the office once, sitting in the same chair as he did years ago when he was told with pride that he was one of the first straight-from-university graduates that they accepted. “Take a seat.”

Pulling out the chair, Dan looked at the crystal glass of water that lay on the desk as something heavy settled in the depths of his stomach. “Is there a problem?” He asked, trying to test the waters shakily with an even voice. It wasn’t Dan’s fault that he refused to help a guilty client, someone that he didn’t want to help. He knew it was his right as a lawyer, but it could have also raised a red flag to his superiors considering that it was his first time that Dan had ever recused himself from an investigation. That was why many considered Dan to be the best in the business, because there was never an investigation too big for him to turn down. “If this is about the identity theft case, I still stand by my right to refuse a client. I resigned from the investigation since it was not my specialty.” He said, trying to keep his voice level even as it raised an octave. He was twenty-seven, and yet still by far the youngest lawyer at the law firm. 

His boss was in his mid-fifties, and he was rubbing the space between his two eyebrows, a deep wrinkle forming. “Look, Daniel.” He said with a sigh, as if he had given this same spiel time and time again. “You’re a good kid,” He said, and even if Dan knew it was meant to be a positive thing, he couldn’t help but feel belittled because of his age. His boss stood up and walked to a filing cabinet and pulled out a large binder with the words Attorney: Howell, Daniel James engraved into the binder in a thick, gold embossed pigment. “You’ve let seven cases go this month alone. Don’t worry about the identity theft case.” He said, and Dan could feel the heat rising to his cheeks shamefully. He had never stepped out of line, he had never broken a rule, never taken a bribe. He was good and lawful until the end. Dan had always played by the book. Now that he had been called out, he felt shameful almost.

His boss and general manager opened the binder and began flipping through the pockets of plastic encasing folders upon folders, some circled with red ink or crossed out with a black permanent marker completely. “The Reyes couple opted to go to the other divorce attorneys in the state because you were, too critical of their decisions.” Dan looked at his boss in disbelief. The Reyes case had been his last one, and it ended rather abruptly once they began to discuss going to court. He had only resolved the case yesterday and never thought anything of it since he had accomplished the case.

Dan sighed and tried his best not to roll his eyes. “Mrs. Reyes filed for divorce on the grounds that her husband was texting his ex girlfriend.” He said, trying to implicate the absurdity of the situation. His clients had experienced a shift from the odd wife trying to scrape together thousands of dollars to justify her husband’s infidelity to the rich elderly couple trying to abuse the no-fault clause on a court of law, exploiting the spouse for a pretty penny.

“You’re task as alawyeris to remain unbiased and give only your professional advice.” He said, with a tight-lipped frown. “Suggesting a well paying couple who was billing you three hundred pounds an hour to ‘go to marriage counselling, or whatever’ is extremely unprofessional, Mister Howell.” Dan sighed. Whilst a rereading of his actions made him feel like the one at fault, he swore that his intentions were for the better. He knew that many of the divorce lawyers in the firm gave their opinion regularly, but Dan believed he was being treated unfairly due to his reputation as a no-nonsense lawyer and a particularly young one.My youth has nothing to do with my expertise. I graduated from the University of Manchester Law course,Dan would say on a frequent basis to anyone who undermined him. He may be a generation younger, but he worked just as hard as everyone else, if not more.                                                                                                                          

“I’m just saying, Mr. and Mrs. Reyes could save a lot more money if they invested in a really good relations therapist.” Dan said, trying to remain calm and collected, but he knew he committed a mistake. He was lucky to have his job, and he knew that he should be more grateful he had reached such success so early in life. “I’m sorry.” He spat out, trying to sound as considerate as possible. “It was an accident, and it won’t happen again.” He apologised in a monotonous voice, a spiel rehearsed from childhood. Suddenly he was nine and in the plastic playground hastily set up in the backyard apologising to his playmate from school for pushing him and giving him a scraped knee. There was almost something sacrilegious about the words.

But Dan wasn’t in the playground, and he wasn’t nine. He was twenty-seven and he was in a law firm working with guys twice his age. His boss sighed, and flicked through the binder quickly. “Mr. and Mrs. McClain filed a report once your services ended that you werediscussingtheir extramarital affairs.” He said, trying to implicate the gravity of the situation. Dan chewed at his lip to bite back on words he was taught never to use, when his mother chastised him to never talk back to his elders — to his superiors. Dan sighed and nodded his head, but his boss wasn’t quite done yet.

“What about Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg? Or the Sanchez investigation?” He said, rattling off the many instances that Dan had lost a client for the law firm. He hung his head in shame and tried to hide the heat rising to his cheeks. “Or the Edisons’ divorce?” He asked, holding up the files stamped in bright red ink withunresolvedglowering at Dan in unsatisfactory capital letters.

His boss sighed at last, shut the binder and leaned back in his executive chair. “Daniel, you’re twenty-three.”

“Twenty-seven,” Dan interjected.

“Twenty-seven.” His boss reiterated, blinking slowly. “You’re still young. You just turned twenty-seven a few days ago. You should be working a dead-end retail job and handing out flyers.” He said wistfully, as if from experience. There was a ghost of a laugh, something that didn’t really reach his boss’ eyes.

“I was doing that when I was seventeen.” Dan said sullenly, thinking of the ways that people have belittled and made him feel smaller just because of his age. He was almost thirty, when would people start taking him seriously?

Nonetheless, his boss shook his head and exhaled the way he did when he was making a big decision with the team. “Take some days off, yeah?” He said, and Dan took a thick gulp. “Twenty days? We don’t need most of the staff during the summer season.”

Dan hesitated to answer, so his boss did it for him. “Daniel. You have taken on extra work hours and overtime every single day without a day off since you started working here. Theoretically, your twenty days off would compensate for your vacation days.”

He sighed and looked around the room frantically.No.There was no use arguing with a decorated criminal investigation lawyer. “Twenty days? What am I supposed to do then?” He knew that the law firm was gearing up for summer cuts, when they gave many of his colleagues paid time off. Dan heard them in the halls, gloating about the Mediterranean cruise they had planned. Dan wasn’t like them. He needed this work. Dan was nothing without the work. He had no likes, no interests. Dan had dedicated his life to learning marital law. He couldn’t take a break, not when he was at the top of his game.

His boss stood up and smoothed his suit, opening the glass door with a flourish. “I don’t know. Go back home? Read a book? There’s more to life than the work, Daniel.”

Dan tried to give a candid smile, but he couldn’t muster up anything stronger than a glare. Nobody in his office understood. Dan needed the work. He lived and breathed the work, it was a sustenance fuelling Dan just as much as food or water.

He wanted to scream. He worked the summer cuts every single year, he liked the glowers that the big-shot lawyers gave him when they were laid off. Dan needed to work, it was all he knew. As he walked back to his cubicle and packed up his laptop and briefcase and stalked slowly to the exit of the firm by five in the evening Dan felt like a child being kicked out of his home. As the sliding doors opened and the last remnants of the sunset licked at Dan’s face hungrily, he noticed a wildflower growing in the cracks of the concrete. Dan felt infuriated at how easily they could excuse him from his job.

And yet, he also felt strangely liberated.


	2. Loveless but not emotionless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every emotionless heart of a person has a backstory. Be kind to your mothers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the support on the last chapter, I put my heart and soul into this story. <3

“Hey mum?” Dan said, chewing his lip anxiously. He needed to reprimand himself, to remind himself to breathe. It wasn’t like you lost your job. He told himself firmly, while he waited for his mother to pick up the landline phone. Dan was itching to call his mother and ask if he could stay over for the summer as soon as he got off work, but he restrained himself and told himself that he would call in the morning. He was pleasantly surprised when the same hunger to stare at the infinite expanse of the stars didn’t overtake him, even as his eyes still drifted to the gap where the two curtains met and ended on some nights. Dan was still upset, but once the initial shock of being relieved of his job temporarily wore off on him, he was feeling the same numb lethargy he felt on a day to day basis. Sometimes he finds himself wanting to feel the same white-hot fury or the amazement at the stars he felt. Dan wanted to feel that again once more, to remind him he was human. All he felt was the same numbness. All he felt was nothing.

 

“Oh Daniel! What a surprise! Did you hear about what happened on the news, it was the most fascinating story. There was this—“ Dan sighed. “I don’t have time for this.” He snapped unexpectedly, and then took a breath to try something softer as the other end of the line went silent. His mother was always like this, babbling and rambling at any given moment. Dan always hesitated to use the phone to call his mother, because it would remind him of the somber voice mails that his mother would send him so often yet never bring to discussion.

“Sorry. I mean, I was wondering if I could stay over at your place for the next few weeks. The law firm wanted me to use up my vacation days before the year ended so there were no extra charges.” He said, ranting on about some ridiculous excuse that only his mother would believe. His kind, too trusting mother.

 

“Of course! Of course you can stay over! I can make you that soup you liked so much, and the cheesecake you never got a chance to try last weekend. And I can do the washing, and—“ She said, after Dan cut his mother off unexpectedly. Even as he tried to rush his mother, he still felt a swell of love for her. It wasn’t the same extreme rage or amazement or wonder that Dan had been feeling, but it was something other than the white noise rumbling in his veins. The tiny swell of emotion was all Dan needed. At times it was crazy, maybe even petrifying, to think that Dan can’t remember the last time he felt so much joy that he could barely breathe when laughing, or when the last person he talked to wasn’t on the subject of office small talk, but it was just how his life was going. Dan sighed. He was twenty-seven and already felt burned out.

 

“Mum. That’s great. But if I’m going to catch the next train I’ll need to do some packing.” He said, itching to scroll through another mindless WikiPedia article, or brush up on an eBook he had yet to read, anything that included him scrolling on his phone before beginning to pack. His phone was his closest companion, his gateway to the world. If he was going to take these twenty days off, he would do them right. Dan was already dreaming of working on the divorce case of the Randolph husbands, something to make him feel better. Working at the law firm wasn’t exactly exhilarating, but the small thrill that he felt when he was praised for finishing a case so quickly made him feel something, anything. However, if his bosses would make a big scene of relieving him from his duty, he would spend his time right and not thinking about work.

“Oh, I understand honey. I’ll see you soon!” She exclaimed, making a bunch of kissing sounds at the speaker. Dan smiled, a small, grateful one.

In truth, there wasn’t much for Dan to pack. His mother had always insisted for him to keep some clothes back at his childhood home, and he always only wore the same pair of black jeans tailored with a sharp button-down or blazer. Even in his free time did he dress too formal, it was his downside and his upside. After shoving an assortment of the most casual pieces he owned into his single luggage and printing his train ticket and getting dressed in one of his only black t-shirts, Dan sighed a breath of relief. Dan loved his work, he needed his work. But every moment that passed made him feel a little bit more relaxed, a feeling that was initially uneasy but adaptable to. He put on a mindless film on his Netflix and curled up on the sheepskin sofa with three hours to spare before going to the train station, crawling into a ball like he did when he was a child trying to escape from the world.

His childhood seemed to be haunting him today.

As the hours passed and two microwaveable meals were eaten, he got dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, beginning to lock up the house and lugging his suitcase to the front of the apartment. He wasn’t doing much on his first day off, but he did answer a bunch of emails and draft some documents. He knew that technically this was supposed to be his vacation time, but Dan just couldn’t stand being cooped up in his flat being aggressively unproductive. Dan’s flat was bare and hardly a reflection of his own personality, with no real family photos or personal embellishments. He bought the apartment fully furnished, and never bothered to make any changes. He never saw his apartment as his own, but as a passageway between going out and going to work. Before slamming the door with a flourish, that same hunger and life inside of Dan that was brewing made him feel impulsive and reckless as he stared at his smartphone that lay idly in his hand that ordered a taxi just moments before. It made him feel human, but it also made him feel unsafe. He stared at his phone that always was just to the side of him, constantly ringing with needs to be attended to and questions to be answered. Even as he stares at his phone blankly, there were already work calls to attend to. He was off hours, but something made Dan feel as if he was breaking a law, abandoning his work for just a few seconds.

Before thinking, Dan put his phone down on the granite countertop and shut the door with his phone on the other end. Double locking it, and then triple locking the dead bolted door. He decided on an impulse not to check his phone for the next twenty days. It felt as if Dan cut off his tether to the world, which he realised was a toxic way of thinking but didn’t stop him from believing it nonetheless. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, and there was still that same tingle of adrenaline left in him. Not exactly the fear he would experience before going in front of the court to plea on behalf of his defendant, but a fear of what he was truly capable of. As he carried his suitcase down the three flights of stairs and hauled it into the cramped taxi vehicle, the cab driver greeted him with a smile.

“Where to?” He asked Dan, in an accent that made Dan instantly know he was from Wales.

“King’s Cross, please.” He asked politely, reaching into his back pocket for his smartphone and then pausing once he realised what he was doing and folding his hands in his lap.

“Busy boy, yeah?” The cab driver teased lightly. “Lots of people going back and forth from King’s Cross today."

Dan tried to smile amicably. “Yeah, I guess so.” He said, watching the flickering lights of London pass by him in a daze. He wanted to tell the cab driver that no, _in fact this is my first vacation in years and I’m terrified of going so long without a distraction_ , but instead he tried to close his eyes and think of something, anything.

He tried thinking of his mother, hunched over the dining room table twenty years ago writing furiously in a wire bound notebook crunching numbers. Dan tried remembering the divorce trial a year later, when his mother was granted full custody of him.

Dan tried remembering his mother’s words, clear and determined in the flickering lamplight of eleven in the evening.

“When you get older, you’re gonna be a big powerful lawyer that can defend anyone while they go through divorce.” His mother mumbled, mostly to herself. Dan was only eight and he didn’t know what some of the words meant, but he knew what a lawyer was, and he was determined to be one.

 

“King’s Cross.” The cab driver said, jolting Dan out of his trail of thoughts. Dan fished through his pocket for some change and handed it to him with a smile.

As Dan stepped out of the cab and pulled out his suitcase from the trunk, the driver smiled at him as he went on his way. “Have a nice night.” He said, with a big smile spreading across his face. Dan’s eyebrows furrowed in a tight line. He could never understand how people could be so kind to someone they barely even know.

The moment that Dan stepped foot on the train did he realise that he made a mistake by leaving his phone at home. He had an hour long train ride ahead of him, and everyone around him was typing away on their phones or laptops while Dan was left to stare out the window into the black expanse of nighttime. He looked outside at the lights that passed by him every so often, as he closed his eyes and thought about how with every moment he distanced himself further from his life in London. He didn’t bring any files with him, but it didn’t stop him from going over unresolved divorce cases in his head. It was probably incredibly unhealthy to think about work so much, but there was only so much that he could do without connection to the Internet or access to any of his work files. At the end of the train ride he tried to push the idea of work so far away so he could make the most of his time at his childhood hometown.

 

“Oh Daniel, there you are!” His mother exclaimed happily, almost instantly after Dan got off the train. Even if Dan could shut his eyes and hear the desperate pleas of his mother in his mind, Dan will forever associate his mother’s memory with her always cooking, babbling about something unimportant, stating a fact that would stick with Dan for the rest of his life.

Dan smiled politely and allowed his mother to take his single carry-on luggage as she wrapped her arm around his waist. “I tried calling your cell, but I couldn’t get any signal at our house! And then of course I went on Google and your train was late, so I went down to the station and I saw people getting off and then…”

Dan shut his eyes and let a real true smile spread across his face. Whilst he was a teenager he loathed his mother’s babbling, but while he was a man of few words, Mrs. Howell had always enough conversation for the two of them.

As she clicked the car door open and Dan crawled inside the passenger seat, he allowed the scent of warmth and something sweet to fill his senses. Far away from his flat in London that felt nothing like home, he allowed himself to exhale. “You wouldn’t have been able to contact me anyways. I left my phone at home.” Dan said, as his mother smiled big and wide.

“Oh! That’s very smart! You know the other day I read a study about phones and what would happen after prolonged exposure…” As Dan’s mother rattled on, he thought of how his mouth filled with the bitter taste of the word home and it’s association to the cold flat that was devoid of personality. As they entered the house and looked around at the trinkets scattered around and the odd photo of Dan with a bad haircut on his graduation day, he laughed offhandedly at something his mother said.

He was home. Truly home. His home wasn’t in London, in that terrible flat with poor insulation and no personality in the monochrome minimalist design, his home wasn’t at the law firm where he was constantly belittled for his age, but it was with his mother in his two bedroom thatched roof house out in the countryside.

* * *

 

The next day, Dan woke up to the sunlight streaming through his windows and hugging at his face instead of the obnoxious alarm clock that would ring in his ears the whole morning. He rolled over to the bedside table and began searching fruitlessly for his cellphone, and then feeling a sharp sting of fear that he was missing out followed by elation. He got up from under the goose down duvet and went to the washroom, bathing himself in scents of lavender and honey and not of the sterile five-in-one body wash and shampoo he used every day back in London. Whilst on the days he was working, Dan’s morning routine comprised of getting out of bed, taking a five minute shower and leaving the house with nothing but a cup of coffee and a granola bar ingested. This morning, Dan trudged down the staircase that was always incredibly noisy and creaky, so loud that he could barely sneak out of the house as a teenager.

The house looked empty when Dan saw his mother cooking eggs alone in the great big kitchen. The windows were wide open and there it was again — that scent that Dan could never describe, that scent he could never truly capture. Growing up, Dan always remembered his house as bright and noisy. There was never a moment in Dan’s childhood home that was quiet, with his mother constantly talking and his childhood tattle being cooed over by relatives. Now as he stood on the staircase, peering ever so slightly into the kitchen with his mother not talking, humming, or singing, the house felt despicably lonely. He could only imagine how lonely his mother in the decade he was gone for. Dan could feel the sensation of guilt, the feeling that his lungs were filling up with water, bubbling and boiling and making it impossible to breathe. He felt trapped as he watched as his mother prepared breakfast silently — when will he ever feel like he isn’t breaking his mother’s heart?

In his days at law school they were taught elocution lessons, how to say every single word without emphasis and in a completely flat tone. Eventually his monotonous voice transported itself out of the courtroom and into his daily manner of speaking. By the time he had been working at the law firm for five years, his feelings and emotion had gone just as flat as his voice. His coworkers whispered behind his back that he was heartless, a robot with no emotion. It scared Dan for him to believe that they were right all along but even if he was loveless, he was not emotionless. No love was lost for his strong, selfless mother. He couldn't bring himself to tell the aunts and uncles who teased Dan to  _settle down with a nice girl already_ that he simply could not, because he spend every single day of every single month reading about all of the foul ways that a marriage can go sour. The very idea of love and marriage and children made Dan feel sick to his stomach, it made him think of the dozens of couples he worked with so that he could deftly skewer their marriage. He simply could not fathom how anyone could believe that romantic love was pure and good and the root of all beauty, when divorce lawyers exist against that purpose. He wasn't emotionless, Dan felt embarrassed and ashamed and angry and sad, but he could never allow himself to feel  _love,_ not when earlier in the day he was tackling a case on infidelity.

He cleared his throat and took a step into the kitchen. “Hey mum.” Dan greeted, with a groggy voice.

His mother smiled as she began setting the table. “Morning Daniel,” She said as Dan took a seat opposite his mother. “Got any plans for the day?” She asked, and Dan never felt so grateful for small talk.

Dan shrugged. “I dunno. A lot has changed since I left home.” He replied, looking out the window while his mother nodded earnestly. “I guess I’ll take a walk through town or something.”

For the first time in the last forty eight hours was Dan realising the repercussions of his actions. He was left without contact to the Internet for twenty days in a tech-dark small town. “I don’t even know what I’m going to do for the next few weeks.”

His mother’s eyes lit up as she sliced a piece of her omelette. “Oh! There’s this new little plant shop that opened recently, and it’s owned by one of our neighbours!” She exclaimed as if on the brink of an epiphany. “They’re always looking for help, Daniel.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Mum, I’m a divorce lawyer with a job in London. Are you really suggesting I work in retail?” He asked quizzically.

His mother nodded enthusiastically. “Daniel. You work a full time office job and barely see the sun, and I would be damned if you went twenty days without doing anything productive!”

 

He sighed, and relented. Maybe it was because he knew how lonely his mother got, or maybe it was because he remembered the out-of-character voice mails he received, but Dan felt like he owed it to his mother to take her advice just this once.

Dan was never impulsive or rebellious, it was just that in his adolescence he grew up with disregard for others’ advice. The one time he listened to his mother and really took her advice to heart was when he was eight and promised her to become a lawyer. He was twenty-seven and lived alone in London, but he knew that he was making his mother happy. “Fine. I’ll go to this plant shop, where I am extremely overqualified and apply.” He said with boyish sarcasm.

 

When he exited his house and took the five-minute stroll to main street, Dan realised how understaffed and how under visited the plant shop really was. Aside from the elderly lady who was evidently the owner, there was a girl around Dan’s age with bright red hair that looked strangely familiar to him. “Do I know you?” He asked the girl, as she gave him a sly smile and stuck out a hand.

“Rebecca.” She said politely, firmly shaking his hand. Dan was trying to identify where he remembered him from, but he just couldn’t place it.


	3. The middle place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As far as meet cutes go, this one is ugly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and sorry for the late update! No excuse I was just lazy to write

A brief glance at Dan’s resume was all it took, and after brief banter about him being _incredibly overqualified_ as he mentioned before, he was basically hired on the spot. His days followed a routine, but it was such a pattern that was so different from his usual morning routines in London that it was equally refreshing. Dan’s mornings began much slower, rising at nine in the morning instead of six. He got ready for half an hour instead of mere minutes, and talked with his mother over breakfast for hours until lunchtime. By lunchtime he walked into the main strip of shops and into the quaint plant shop, where he watered plants, picked songs for the shop’s playlist, and tended the till when the odd passerby was looking for a houseplant. He became acquaintances with Rebecca, the quiet salesperson who worked the shifts after him. Dan had already informed his boss that he would only be working for seventeen days, and she just smiled warmly.

 

A few days later, Dan was already adjusting into his new routine with ease.

The door creaked sullenly as Dan was preoccupying himself whilst he dug a sharp groove into the corner of the countertop with his house key. It was late afternoon, and not a person entered the store during his shift. In London, Dan would see the occasional shopper in the florists’ window from where he lived across the road, but even on the peak days of sales would there be only five or six people. His flower shop in the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world only attracted so many people, and yet out here one hour away from the next major city, this little plant shop managed to stay alive.

 

His eyes flicked up to the door chimes and looked to see a tall, lanky figure standing against the natural sunlight. He huffed quietly, he had seen this type before. The foolish, insolent lovesick boy that got lost on his way to the florists’ boutique.

He looked up at the boy as he did a double take — there was something off with him. It was as if the boy was dwindling, taking his time. None of his seven people that entered the shop during his shift stayed longer than thirty seconds, walking out as soon as they realised they had lost their way. The customer was young, around Dan’s age, and was wearing black skinny jeans and a collared top, carrying around a brown leather messenger bag. It was only for a brief moment did Dan feel something pull at him, something primal and strange.

He blinked quickly when the feeling washed over him, remembering how he was probably just shopping for his girlfriend.

Dan sighed, he didn’t need some idiot boy wasting his time. “Florist is down the road.” He said gruffly, as the boy on the other side of the counter looked at him in surprise.

“I’m not looking for the florists’.” The customer replied sheepishly, as he ran a hand through his short hair. “Actually, I was wondering where I could find the Japanese succulent imports.” He said, flashing Dan a shy grin.

 

Dan tried to contain himself from rolling his eyes. “To your left.” He replied, nodding in the direction of a small shelf of plants. The customer gave him a small smile of gratitude and began poking around the store.

_“_ How much is this?” The customer hollered from the far end of the shop, jolting Dan from his quickly spiralling noose of thoughts. It was getting into the hours of the day when he would think about work and the cases. As much as he tried to loosen up, he was still hardened from the city living. The customer held up a potted plant with tiny, green leaves budding out from the stem.

Dan cleared his throat and waved the customer down. “Come here. I’ll ring it up.” He saw something almost like apprehension flicker for just a second in the boy’s eyes, but it disappeared not a moment sooner and shrugged.

“Okay.” He said, stuffing his free hand into his pocket as he strides over to the counter.

 

As he deposited the leafy plant onto the counter and Dan typed it into the biometric sales system, the boy propped both his elbows onto the counter and put his head in his hand. “I thought you were the one who worked here. How come you don’t know how much the plant costs?”

“I just started working here.” Dan stated monotonously, as he turned the screen around to show the customer the price of the plant.

He nodded in understanding. “I know. You don’t look like Rebecca at all.”

 

Dan blinked at the customer and snorted. “Well of course I don’t look like a five foot four redheaded woman. What is she anyways, your girlfriend?”

The customer shook his head with vigour, with importance. “No, no. Not at all. It’s just that Rebecca lets me do whatever I want in the store.” He said with a smile, as Dan noted that he poked his tongue out when he smiled.

The customer stuck a hand out, expecting Dan to shake it. “I’m Phil.”

 

Dan blinked at Phil absently. “Dan.” He said, keeping his hands at his sides. He half expected for Phil to flinch, to shift his weight uncomfortably as his coworkers often did when Dan rejected their greetings. Instead, Phil just took his decline to accept his handshake in stride.

“Well Dan,” Phil said folding his arms behind his back. “I suggest you get to know me, because I spend a lot of my time here.” He said with a shrug.

 Dan furrowed his brow. “Oh, really? Because I’ve been working here for the last five days and I haven’t seen you in here.” He said, taking a look around the shop.

 “I usually come in the mornings. You know, when Rebecca works her shifts.” Phil replied, rocking on the heels of his feet. “And before I have to go to work and whenever I have free time. Today’s his day off.”

 

Dan pulled out his chair and took a seat. He was a stickler for the rules, played by the book better than any lawyer at the firm. He scanned over briefly the thin company guide book, but out in his small town where everything felt no need for strict rules, he let his guard down just a little. “Well, don’t let me stop you.” Dan replied, after hesitating for a brief second. He should feel charmed that some stranger was divulging his life story to Dan, but he felt nothing.

 “Go do whatever Rebecca lets you do.” Dan added, knowing in the back of his mind that giving a stranger complete allowance for whatever he may do was a complete mistake, but Dan was tired of playing by the rules. Maybe he wanted to make a mistake or two.

 

Phil looked around for a while, and then took a seat on the monoblock plastic stool. Dan eyed Phil warily for a second, and then went back to reading the current latest installment of whatever first edition classic his mother harboured in her bookshelf. Before his mother retired to living in a slightly eerie and idyllic town all alone, she was an English University professor. One trait that Dan hadn’t seemed to lose from his mom was an itching for a good book. He wasn’t sure how long he spent reading, or how much time had elapsed, but after a moment, Phil cleared his throat.

 “Picture of Dorian Gray.” Phil said, as Dan lowered the book from his line of sight.  “Love that book.” He continued, with a small smile.

 Dan shook his head in disbelief. “You read this book?” He asked, motioning to the tattered cover. Phil nodded earnestly.

 “I used to read a lot when I was in University.” He said with a shrug. “Now I don’t have time for reading.”

 Dan raised his eyebrows. “Well if you don’t read anymore, what do you do?” He asked.

 

Phil smiled widely, and it made Dan think of a Cheshire cat. He tilted his head to a countertop, where Phil had cleared out some plants and set up a portable paintbrush and some watercolour paints. Dan stands up from his seat behind the register and walks closer to Phil. He knows that he should say something, but Dan isn’t entirely sure if its against store policy to paint the items on sale.

As Dan walks closer, he sees the exact greenhouse-like plant shop they were standing in, except with some of the lines melted together and the colours slightly murky. He wants to say something, but his veins were filling with static and white noise. “So this is what Rebecca lets you do.” He says monotonously.

 Either Phil didn’t notice Dan’s monotonous tone or he decided to brush it aside and ignore it completely, but he nodded enthusiastically and smiled. “She doesn’t just _tolerate_ it. Rebecca is one of my best selling customers!” He exclaims happily.

 

“You’re an artist.” Dan said in a deadpan tone, as if presenting facts to a jury or to a judge.

 Phil nodded, unfazed by Dan’s bored tone.. “Yeah. Maybe you should visit my store-slash-workspace some time. I guess it could also cover for my art gallery as well.” He whispered, pulling out a piece of loose leaf paper and scrawling down an address for Dan located on the far side of town.

 Dan pulled his lips into a thin smile, the best he could muster. He didn’t exactly know Phil, but what did he have to lose? He had been back in his hometown for eight days already, and he hd only talked to three people in the last week. “I don’t even know who you are.” Dan stated dully, every other point sticking unsatisfactorily to the back of his throat.

 

Phil shrugged nonchalantly, as if he’s invited countless strangers to his art gallery before and had to put up this argument many times. “Well then, maybe if you visited you could get to know who I was.” He replied with a smile in his childlike response.

Dan finally sighed and relented. “Tomorrow, at eight? My shift ends at five.” He said, looking down at his shoes, suggesting the proposition in a flat voice.

Phil smiled and nodded as he packed up his belongings. “Tomorrow at eight it is.” He said, opening the store front door and walking out.

Dan couldn’t resist exhaling a breath of relief. He was often ridiculed for being too heartless, emotionless even. He couldn’t help but feel his insides swell as Phil, a complete stranger, decided to look past that.

  

The next day, Dan was biding his time by watering the plants and pretending like he wasn’t counting down the minutes until he got off his shift. There were fifteen minutes until he got off work, and he wondered if this was what it was like to loathe your job and ache for the few hours of solace that proceeded afterwards. It wasn’t as if Dan loved his job being a lawyer, but his work never ended as soon as he clocked out of the office. He never had any set vacation days until now. For Dan, free time was an illusion, a ruse.

 

Five minutes until closing, Dan heard Phil’s voice before he looked up from the current plant he was watering before closing up shop. He was just about ready to leave, with the only thing left to do was lock up the front doors. “Ready to go?” Phil said. Dan turned around to take a look at Phil. He was wearing a bright red shirt buttoned all the way to the top, and was wearing mismatching neon yellow and blue socks that made Dan’s white t-shirt and jeans look drab. In fact, the two outfits Dan had seen Phil wear had already made Dan’s entire wardrobe feel depressing. 

Dan looked at Phil in confusion. “I thought I was meeting you at the address at eight pm.” Dan stated flatly, not comprehending why Phil was at the shop so early, or at the plant shop at all.

He saw a whisper of a blush appear on Phil’s cheeks and on the tips of his ears. It made no sense to Dan. Why would a blushing Phil come four hours early to his workplace when they agreed to meet at his studio? He made a mental note to ask Phil later in the night if he had the chronic skin condition rosacea which caused your skin to be pigmented red for no apparent reason.

Phil stuffed both hands in his pockets and sucked in a breath. “Well, I was just thinking about how you were going to come over tonight. Then I realised that since you were just getting off work you might be hungry, so do you wanna grab dinner before we go?” He asked, staring down at his feet.

Dan frowned at Phil. He was certainly _not_ going straight from work and then to Phil’s studio. He had four hours to kill, and he was planning on spending them getting ready and eating dinner with his mother. He wanted a quiet night in, but since Phil had already invited him to dinner he couldn’t just shake his head and walk away like what he did with his colleagues. Dan had to accept Phil’s offer, and he didn’t exactly feel bad. If anything, Dan felt closer to _happy_ than he did to chronic, aching numbness and nothingness. He liked it, wanted to relish in the feeling.

“I don’t even know you.” Dan said in the same flat voice he used the day before, but with a ghost of a smile lingering on his lips. It was as if the uncanny phrase was an inside joke between the two of them.

While Dan just gave Phil a shy smile, Phil broke out into an all encompassing grin. “Well, maybe if we grabbed dinner you would get to know me.” He said, in the phrase that Dan half expected him to say.

And so, Dan gave Phil a small smile, the best he could offer. “I would like that, Phil.”

 

Phil smiled as he let Dan close up the shop. He stood there idly observing the way that the light hit the store in the late afternoon, hesitating between staying awkwardly put and reaching for his paints as Dan tinkered about the store doing end of the day duties. Dan quickly hurries up, and then within the hour the two of them walked out together in the mid-summer breeze. “So, where are you from?” Phil asked, less than five minutes after they began their walk. Dan sighed, he never did peg Phil as the type of guy that could stay comfortable in silence.

Dan wanted to roll his eyes, but instead he just shook his head. “Save the small talk for dinner, Phil.” He replied candidly. The two of them walked down the rest of the route that Phil walked and led in silence.

They only had to walk down the street to a newly built Italian restaurant, that looked severely out of place when in his disheveled small town. While he was gone for almost ten years, the modern and sleek apartments and commercial businesses provided a stark contrast to some of the older places built with thatched roof and sun dried bricks, instead of cutting aluminum and rose quartz. As the two boys sat down and gorged themselves on pasta and pizzas, Phil looked at Dan with a sly smile. “So, where are you from?” He asked Dan, who felt a bubble of warmth bloom in his white-noise of a body.

 

“London.” He replied curtly. “But I was born here.” Dan wanted to say more, to _feel_ more. He wanted to tell Phil of all the meaningless blather that his coworkers back at the law firm discussed, but as always he felt at war between his mind and his tongue.

Phil’s eyes widened for a moment as he chewed. He was certainly a more attentive speaker and listener than Dan ever was.“Oh! I was born and raised in Brighton but I moved here for a change.” He said, looking around at the half empty place, and then leaned in as if to tell Dan an age old secret.

 Phil seemed to talk enough for the both of them, which neither were bothered by. “I’ve always wanted to live in London, but everyone I knew despises Londoners.” He said, while not looking at Dan with a shred of animosity. “When I was younger of course I wanted to live in London, but everyone always tells me that _the rent is exorbitant, the commute is terrible,_ and that _all the city eats is sandwiches.”_ Phil said with a chuckle.

He leaned back in his seat and took a look at Dan. “You tell me, though. Should I live in London?” Phil asked, with dead seriousness.

“Well, the rent _is_ grossly overpriced, the tube _is_ littered with tourists all the time, and my entire diet is composed of sandwiches.” Dan said, a foul attempt at humor. He looked at Phil and decided to play sarcasm to his advantage. “So I guess maybe you should live in London.”

 

A beat of silence filled the space between them for a moment, and then Dan and Phil shared a rare moment of laughter between them.

Out of London and Brighton and all the towns in the middle, Dan already knew where he wanted to live for the rest of his life.

Here. Right here. Dan wanted to live in the moment of laughter between two people, because he was so assured that nothing bad and corrupt in the world could ever taint such a place.

 

By the time that they finished their meal and were walking to Phil’s studio, Dan was in a good mood, but still couldn’t _feel._ Certainly, not in the way he knew Phil felt. Phil always felt in extremes. When he was happy he was ecstatic. When he was shy he was timid. When he was embarrassed he was chagrined. When he was laughing he bellowed.

Dan wondered what Phil felt when he was angry.

* * *

 

“I’m actually not that good of an artist.” Phil warned, as they began their ascent in the elevator. 

“Should’ve told me that when you gave me the address yesterday. Or maybe when we were eating dinner.” Dan said dryly.

Phil smiled and leaned back against the elevator panelling. “You know what I like about you, Dan?”

“What?” Dan asked, a little shrivel of something like hope blooming in his insides.

 

“You’re honest.” Phil said, clapping a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “You’re brutally honest and I like that. When I critique myself I’m not looking for validation. I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m looking for suggestions to improve, you know?”

For once, Dan did know what Phil was talking about. On one of his first years working at a law firm, he was stuck on a case that he had to justify. “I can’t do this. I’m a terrible lawyer.” He muttered to nobody in particular.

His currently assigned adjoining desk mate looked up at Dan and blinked. “You?” He asked in disbelief. Dan nodded.

“You’re the most gifted lawyer I know! You, Daniel Howell, the youngest…” Dan tuned most of his coworker’s compliments off. What he really wanted was for him to take a look at his case and point out what he did wrong. The feeling was something familiar, something that Dan resonated with.

 

As they reached the floor and Phil unlocked the door, Dan took a step in. First he saw floor to ceiling windows capturing the sun’s slow descent into the horizon. And then, he saw a kitchen. And a hallway. And a television set. He grinned instinctively as Dan realized he was in Phil’s _house._

“I might have tricked you, but I wasn’t lying.” Phil whispered in a low voice, as Dan’s eyes roamed around the flat.

While Dan’s house was cold and uninviting, Phil’s house had spirit. Everywhere he looked, Dan saw art. He saw sculptures and pots and paintings on the walls. He saw jars made out of clay and drawings of all shapes and sizes, good or bad. Quite frankly, Dan wouldn’t be surprised if Phil made all of his furniture by hand,

As Dan turned around to see Phil still standing in the entrance, the same fear and belonging that Dan felt when he looked up at the stars over a week ago overcame him. He looked at Phil and saw art, too. 

They settled into an awkward silence for a heartbeat of a moment, and then Phil cleared his throat. “Wanna go out on the balcony?” Phil teased. “I bet you don’t get views like this in London.” He chuckled. 

Dan marveled at how well Phil could read a situation as they fell in step. He looked on at this insanely perceptive person who seemed to read right through the white noise soul of Dan. He looked at Phil, who was almost a total stranger and yet was the closest person Dan had to a friend for the first time in years.


	4. Summertime for Adults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only appropriate way to describe Daniel Howell was less psychopathic than James from The End Of The F****ing world, but more emotionally devoid than Ray Holt from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things move very quickly in this chapter, faster than Dan can change his demeanour.

“Sunset is beautiful.” Dan observed, taking a sniff of the fresh air. Even in the newly gentrified apartments and juice bars that were quickly popping up in his small town, there was still the small town feeling that Dan may just never shake. He’ll never forget the hour long commutes to Brighton, the closest city there was. He would never forget how the two hours felt like agony on the one day his mother decided to drive him to London to get the true tourist experience.

Phil looked at Dan for a brief, fleeting second before tearing his gaze away to look up at the sky. “Isn’t it? Summer sunsets always seem prettier than winter sunsets.” 

Maybe it was that Phil used the word _pretty,_ and maybe it was that Dan hadn’t heard any man their age use that word, but something yearned in Dan’s soul. He cleared his throat briefly and looked at Phil. “So you’re an artist.” Dan stated, looking at the various art pieces littered around.

Phil nodded proudly. “Yeah, I guess I am. Mostly I do advertising work and murals for the bigger brands in the south, especially Brighton. My bosses always let me work from here and send over the final drafts over email, so I spend a lot of time in my place.” He said with a small smile. “What do you do?” Phil asked curiously.

 There was something strange and almost taboo for Dan about him telling people that he was a divorce lawyer. He always settled with just being simply known as a lawyer, but with Phil the very fact he was a lawyer made Dan freeze up. He took a deep breath. “I’m a lawyer.”  Dan said flatly, crossing his arms.

 Phil opened his mouth to say more, but he could read the standoffishness of Dan from his body language alone. Whenever Phil brought up work, it was as if Dan put up a cold front in between the two of them. Instead of pressing, Phil politely smiled and let Dan lead the conversation.

Realising that Phil was waiting for Dan to add more, he took a deep breath. “My bosses wanted me to use my vacation days before the year ended and now was the off-season. I go back to London in eleven days.”

 

“Looks like someone’s counting.” Phil teased. He expected Dan to laugh, or to even smile but it was clear he struck a nerve with Dan.

 Dan glared at Phil for a stone-cold second, and then diverted his gaze.

“Is it that you want to go back to London or you don’t?” Phil tried asking softly.

Dan wanted to spit out the answer, because it was plain as day. Since the day he arrived, he had a timer in his mind ticking away until his vacation slash suspension was lifted. But since he got into a routine at the plant shop, since he met _Phil,_ everything had changed. In the moment of sunset that seemed to hold forever, Dan wasn’t so sure.

He sighed defeatedly, as if his greatest enemy had vanquished him. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

 

The admission that the wisecracking, know it all Dan Howell’s brain could not answer the simple question seemed to weigh down on him like Atlas carrying the Earth. Phil was perceptive and cunning in the way that Dan’s book smart colleagues were not. If Dan was a loveless robot, then his fellow men were androids. If they were loveless and eternally calculating mortality rates and divorce settlements, Phil was a lover, a fighter, a creator. He felt in extremes, he loved and laughed in ways Dan could not believe. Earlier in their conversation, Phil had casually mentioned to Dan that he worked from his home/studio more often than others. He worked in visual art and graphic design, making advertisements for the small-town companies in the UK. He was brilliant and eclectic, but Dan still thought Phil was inferior to him. _How strange,_ Dan wondered. _How strange that some artist from the middle of nowhere was the first to stump the ingenious Dan Howell._

“I don’t know.” Dan whispered once more, admitting the statement more to himself than anybody else. He didn’t know because the brief vacation that he was given felt like the summer vacations he experienced as a kid. It was as if he was having a summer holiday as an adult.

Phil smirked, as if the sentiment gave him all the ammunition that he needed. “I thought you knew everything.” Phil whispered.

Dan shrugged. “The one thing you need to master as a lawyer is making everyone around you believe you know more than you do.” He said flatly. These days, he couldn’t feel in the extremes, in the emotions he felt when he saw the stars or left his phone at home.  


The two of them elapsed into another awkward silence. In the conferences or the interviews Dan had with others, he filled the awkward silence by checking his phone obsessively. As he felt himself reaching instinctively for his phone, Dan paused. He was so dependent on his phone, so insistent that without his phone existence was futile

But then he looked at Phil, who he had no ties to online. Dan takes one look at Phil and something inside of him breaks. He hopes that it’s his heart that’s breaking, if just for the notion that Dan has a heart.

* * *

“You went _where_?” Dan’s mother exclaimed, in the same nonsensical southern British accent he used to tease his mother for as a child.

 Dan sighed, as he shut the door firmly. “I went to a _friend’s_ house.” Dan said insistently, with purpose. “His name is Phil.” Dan raised an eyebrow daringly, tempting his mother to rise to the bait.

 His mother put both her hands on her hips. There was a mask of disbelief shrouding her true emotions. As a child, Dan had no friends. He was always too cynical or too dense to understand his peers and their humour. By the time he had entered his A-Levels, he had buried himself in the work. “I don’t believe you.”

 “Well I’m not lying!” Dan exclaimed, wondering why his mother was making such a big deal out of nothing. It felt like an experience he would have as a teenager, one he never had. It felt like he was sneaking out, lying to his mother. If he was seventeen and still in school that would be exactly the case, but Dan was twenty seven and worked a well-paid job in a superpower city. “I’m not lying! His name is Phil, he’s an artist who lives uptown and works for graphic design companies in Brighton!”

 He quickly realised how incredibly absurd he sounded, making up an imaginary friend with a whimsical life but an ordinary name. It was almost as if Dan was begging for his lie to be exposed.

His mother shook her head firmly, and then sighed. “Okay. I believe you.” She said with a laborious exhale. “But tomorrow you need to come with me to a family dinner.” She said temperamentally.

 Dan sighed. He had spent so long avoiding family dinners and reunions, he considered himself almost an expert at it. He had wormed his way out of family gatherings for every cousins’ birthday and long weekend barbecue that Dan could barely remember some of his family’s faces. “Fine.” Dan spat out monotonously. “I’ll go.”

 

The next day, Dan was wishing for Phil to return. He had only an hour to go until his shift was done, and he almost laughed when Rebecca gave him his weekly paycheck earlier in the day.

 “That’s it?” Dan said dryly, staring down at the menial pay. Rebecca wanted to laugh, but she wasn’t the best at deciphering when Dan was being sarcastic or straight up dense. He took the paycheck anyways, even if he didn’t need it. He considered briefly donating it to a charity of some sort.

 He didn’t really need to work, but Dan still had ten days of work left of doing absolutely nothing and he needed the work to survive. His daily routines were slower and were significantly less stressful, but Dan enjoyed sticking to a rigorous routine nonetheless. Dan had spent the rest of the day reading through one of the botanical magazines that were strewn around the shop and watering the plants at will.

 

“Happy pay day.” Phil said sarcastically, as Dan set down the watering can and turned around. Everyone in his small town had the same obnoxious drawl and nasally accent, but Dan would recognise Phil’s voice anywhere. It was distinct, in an alluring kind of way.

 Dan smiled genuinely, walking over to Phil. “Sarcasm isn’t a good look on you.” He said with a smirk, albeit keeping his tone monotonous and flat. He sized Phil up, and Phil was wearing a beat up pair of Doc Martens and some skinny black jeans. Phil’s hair seemed to be eternally quiffed up, and Dan could see some lightly coloured hair that was peeking through his roots.

 “Wanna get dinner?” Phil asked with raised eyebrows.

 Dan rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know you.” He said with a snicker, a joke fresh with meaning between just the two of them.

 “Come with me to get dinner and you could get to know me.” Phil said with a smile eternally pasted to his face. Dan locked up the shop quickly, even if there was still half an hour left in his shift.

 Phil watched as Dan closed the shop in the quickly setting sun. “Isn’t there still thirty-minutes left until closing?” He asked, pointing to a piece of paper marked _Store Hours_ taped to the window of the shop.

 Dan froze. He had never been so hasty with his work. Even if he was working the job for the sake of routine, Dan still made sure to take his work seriously. Something about Phil made Dan’s instincts fly out the window. Dan waved a hand in the air. “It’s okay. Nobody went inside the shop during my shift.” He said with a shrug, as they got inside Phil’s car parked on the other side of the road.

 “You drive?” Dan asked, tilting his head pointedly to the white car Phil was unlocking. The car was pristine and polished, and the top was fully down. All at once, Dan wondered how much an artist such as Phil made in a year.

 Phil looked at Dan as if he had just gotten insulted. “I don’t just _drive,_ Dan. I’m great at it.”

 

Dan didn’t drive, he was heavily reliant on public transportation and Uber, but five minutes later and Dan knew that Phil was an absolutely awful driver. “I thought you said you were great at it!” Dan shouted, as Phil veered sharply to the left.

 “ _It_ being terrible at driving. Did you know I failed my driving test three times?” Phil asked playfully.

 Dan scoffed indignantly. “Well now I do!” He exclaimed, as Phil pushed the speed limit dangerously. They exchanged more remarks and Dan laughed boisterously. Something, _something_ about Phil nagged at Dan. Something about this day made Dan feel as if his insides were being gutted clean, as if there was something eating at him.

 As they slowed to a stop, Dan had to catch his breath from laughing. With the wind whipping in Dan’s face and Phil’s valiant exclamations, it made Dan feel young and foolish again. “We’re eating at your place?” Dan groaned teasingly.

 Phil laughed. “i ordered a little too much takeaway.” He said innocently. “Oh! And I renewed my Netflix subscription.” He said with a wink, as they both made their way into the lift that carried themselves up to his flat. 

In total darkness, entering Phil’s flat seemed different. It felt less like a studio and a workspace and more like a home. There were Christmas lights taped to the wall that Dan would consider childish, but for some reason he admired. There was a soft quirk to Phil, something so refreshing and different compared to the robotic souls that walked onto the tube wearily day in and day out. “Over here!” Phil hollered from the couch, where he had plates of Chinese takeout and a mindless documentary queued up on his Smart TV. Dan paused. The series of events that had been taking place seemed to be fast forwarded and sped up in stark contrast to the sleepy small town. He wanted to stop and tell Phil that they were moving too quickly, but he always did want to be a sucker for the unexpected and daring.

 

Dan took off his shoes and sat down on the couch beside Phil. They sat side by side and curled up underneath blankets like children without supervision. “What do you wanna watch?” Phil asked, as he looked at Dan from the far end of the couch.

“Anything.” Dan shrugged, as he brought the blanket closer to him. As the first minutes passed by, Dan allowed himself to let out a breath that he didn’t realise he was holding in.

 As he looked over at Phil, the feeling that had been nagging away and eating at him the last few days finally disappeared. The feeling of uncanny wonder that he had been feeling was a feeling of _safety._ When Dan was with Phil, he was safe. Away from the tired and agitating lifestyle of the bustling London city, the closest feeling of safety Dan felt was with Phil. Dan felt safe, he felt _home_ staring into Phil’s stark silhouette and profile instead of the aimless chatter of a television personality. He didn’t care if things were moving too fast, because for the two of them things felt just right.

 

 Two episodes of _Sherlock_ and five containers of dumplings and rolls later, Phil turned around to catch Dan staring right at him. “Is there something wrong with my face?” Phil asked, touching it self consciously.

In the warmth and safety of the moment, Dan allowed the heat to rise to his cheeks and swallow him whole. “There’s nothing wrong.” He said, staring at a puzzled Phil just a while longer. “It’s perfect.” He whispered, looking at the blue of Phil’s eyes.

 

 Phil blushed and looked away, and took steady breaths under the quiet darkness of the night. The subtle admission could have flown under the radar if Dan was careful, but his words hung in the air as they tried to sneak glances at each others’ faces. Suddenly, Dan stood up abruptly.

 “What’s wrong?” Phil asked, throwing the blanket on the couch as he stood up beside Dan.

 “Can you drive me back to my house?” Dan asked quickly, as his eyes scanned the surroundings. Phil tried not to flinch as he wondered how the soft Dan who admitted that Phil’s face was perfect could change into the stone cold Dan he met on the first day they encountered each other. “I promised my mum I’d be home to go to my family gathering. i haven’t seen them in years.” He said, groaning miserably. How could he have been so foolish?

 “Yeah, of course.” Phil said, grabbing his keys quickly. “I’m so sorry for distracting you and inviting you over. I should have known you had other plans.”

 Dan shook his head rapidly, feeling a surge of emotion swell up in him. “Phil, it’s _not_ your fault.” He said, as Dan swung open the door and rushed out.

* * *

“Do you want me to come with you?” Phil asked, as he watched Dan shakily gulp as children ran around his family home.

“I don’t wanna be more of a bother than I already am.” Dan admitted flatly.

Phil shook his head. “Don’t be silly, I’ve got nothing better to do tonight.” He said, getting out of the car at the same time as Dan. As they walked nearer to the driveway and onto the small porch, Dan cleared his throat.

“I want to warn you that my family is kind of insane, but I haven’t seen them in years.” Dan shrugged. He knew the moment they would step inside the overcrowded house they wouldn’t get another moment of privacy for the rest of the night.

“Why not?” Phil said, taking a step closer to Dan, a step closer and they would have been right on top of each other. It was as if Phil was constantly tempting fate to go a little further 

Dan’s eyes darkened and looked down at his shoes. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always been scared that they won’t accept me. They’ve always lived out in the country and I guess they’re pretty conservative.” He said nervously. It wasn’t as if his relatives hated the idea of divorce, but they certainly believed a marriage always ended in _til death do us part._

 

It was in that moment did Dan want to tell Phil, he wanted to tell Phil more than ever that he was not just a lawyer, but a divorce lawyer. He wanted to spit it out, but it had always been a point of contention in his past relationships. On dating apps, it was almost obligatory to put your application, and he was always reminded of one of his more awful dates. “You’re a divorce lawyer.” Dan’s date said grimly, as if she had drank a shot laced with poison.

 Dan nodded. “So you’ve seen every single way a relationship fails? Every way a love can die?” She pressed on, and it just made Dan feel guilty that he was put in such an occupation. When he went on dates, Dan thought of divorces and the reasons leading up to the divorce. Infidelity, alcoholism, the possibilities were endless. He wanted to be frank with Phil, but he wanted to spare him the details. After all, Phil was the first person Dan was with that didn’t cloud his thoughts with ways a love could end.

 _Of course, because Phil is just a friend._ His brain teased, taunting himself relentlessly.

 

Dan pulled away from Phil and rung the doorbell before Phil could reply, before his quick witted brain could connect the dots to something totally different. He was expecting one of his great aunts to answer the door, but instead he was greeted by his mother’s short and stout stature. “Mother!” Dan exclaimed with the biggest, brightest, fakest smile that he could possibly paste on. “This is my _friend_ Phil!” He said, clapping a hand jovially on Phil’s shoulder. Both of them knew Dan better, and they knew the whole thing was a ruse as they stared at Dan blankly.

 “Nothing?” Dan asked, returning back to his flat tone. “Okay. Mum, this is Phil. Phil, this is my mum.” He said, dragging Phil’s wrist into the house before Phil and Dan’s mother could interact. Before they could be dragged away, Dan’s mother put a hand in front of them.

 “Wait.” She said, staring up at Dan and Phil who were attached at the wrist. She looked at Dan with a question spelled out right in front of her, but she was smart enough not to ask. “Phil’s real?” She asked, slurring her words just slightly.

 Dan sighed. “Of course he’s _real,_ mum. I told you that I made a friend.” He flattened his lips back to his trademark thin line and went back to using his flat tone as Dan pushed away from his mother and went into the crowd with Phil in tow.

 

Dan introduced Phil to aunts and uncles as _my good friend Phil,_ but one of his aunts was clearly ignoring Phil. “Oh Daniel!” She exclaimed, ruffling his curly hair. “Look how mature you’ve become! I wonder if you’ve gotten a pretty girlfriend yet? Maybe even a wife?”

Dan shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t know how to tell his aunt that he wasn’t looking to marry anyone in the near future, but he still had to smile and agree like everyone did in a family function. Suddenly, he felt Phil’s eyes on him as they awaited his answer. “Oh of course. I’m single, but I can’t wait to find my future _wife.”_ Dan said, injecting ice and venom and every foul meaning into the world wife. He tried to excuse himself from his babbling aunt to find Phil, but Dan couldn’t find Phil at all. He came to the conclusion that Phil simply left, but he couldn’t understand why he cared so much.


	5. Where Dan ends and Daniel begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bu·col·ic  
> byo͞oˈkälik/  
> adjective  
> relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for any and all errors in grammar and continuity. I never edit my work and I always write from 2am to 4am. Basically, this entire story is a fever dream from yours truly.

“Hey. It’s Dan.” He said, using the phone at work to call Rebecca. 

“You’re the only one working this shift, Dan.” Rebecca said dryly, over the omnipresent crackle of the landline phone. Ever since Dan’s impulsive act to not touch a piece of technology for twenty days and the weekend he had off, he was doing fairly well. He had done good on his bet to himself for the first half of his stay, but since the tragedy of last night he felt obligated to call Phil. Only problem was, he had no way of getting Phil’s number. “Anyways, what do you want?”

Dan’s throat suddenly dried as his tongue felt stiff in his mouth. He felt foolish, and he hadn’t felt foolish since he was a child. “Do you have Phil’s number? He told me that you were one of his clients.” Dan hated to call someone so informally, but he didn’t even know Phil’s last name. he was quickly realising how little he knew of Phil, and why Phil took off all of a sudden. Perhaps Phil got spooked after being introduced to all of Dan’s extended family when he barely knew Dan himself.

He heard Rebecca scoff on the other end of the phone. “Phil Lester? The artist?” She asked, as Dan heard Phil’s surname.  _ Phil Lester. Phil Lester. Phil Lester. _ He repeated Phil’s name off the tips of his tongue over and over again for what felt like an eternity.

“Yeah, the artist.” Dan replied. Rebecca relayed the number to him, as Dan scrawled it down on a piece of paper. He wanted to apologise to Phil. He never felt indebted to anyone, to anything. He always felt liable for himself and only for himself. He felt as if he was the only one he had to depend on even from a young age. He was headstrong and wildly independent, feeling alone on an island even when he tried to date people.

 

He muttered a quick thanks to Rebecca as he hung up the phone and tried to ring Phil. After two attempts of Phil not answering, he decided just to leave a voicemail. “Hi. This is Dan. I wanted to apologise. i didn’t mean to bring you into my family. I hope we can still hang out while I’m still in town.” Dan said lamely, as if he was a teenager in high school. Dan wanted to sit and wait at the phone, but he was never the kind to get hung up on a person. Even when he deeply wronged someone at the law firm, it never felt as if Dan was dealing with human beings, merely colleagues. With Phil, he knew that Phil was the kind of person who lived and laughed and loved. He just hoped he could do right by him.

Dan let himself think of Phil, he let himself dwindle on what had just happened but not get hung up on him. Dan watered the plants and cleaned the windows, he played his classic brooding playlists on the shop speaker, making sure that he kept busy but also kept Phil in mind. He waited and waited for Phil to visit the plant shop, but he never arrived. It was a bitter feeling, getting your hopes up for a scenario you merely planned in your mind. He felt dejected in a way he never did before, deflating him even more after a weeks long of work. He wondered if this is what it felt like, to be so burned out by a job you loathed.

 

When Dan made the short stroll home, he saw his mother sitting at the kitchen table with a warm mug of rosemary tea. “Daniel!” She exclaimed happily, even if the joy never met her eyes.”You’re home early for the first time in a while.” She observed, ushering Dan into the chair opposite her. 

“We need to talk about Phil.” She said, in a grave tone that she hardly used with anyone — especially Dan.

“What’s wrong?” Dan asked dully, and yet with a hint of intrigue. 

She shook her head rapidly and tried her best to paste on a smile. “Nothing, nothing! It’s just that you’re halfway through your stay already, and the last thing you need is to have  _ unfinished business _ when you don’t even know when you’ll come back home.”  

Dan rolled his eyes. “What are you talking about?” He asked flatly.

She cleared her throat. “Daniel. This is the first time in years since you came back home, and now you’re getting a job, making friends, and settling in here as if you moved back?”

He shrugged nonchalantly, if only to hide the swell of discomfort brewing in his lungs. “Of course I am. I’m trying to adapt to my circumstances.”

“I’m just saying, this isn’t like you. The Daniel I know wasn’t the one at the party who pasted on a big fake smile even if it was only for a few minutes.” Dan’s mother chastised. “I don’t know who you are, Daniel. It feels like I’m losing you.”

Dan sighed heavily. Ever since he left home to move to London, it felt like he was becoming his mother’s greatest regret. Isn’t this what she had wanted? For Dan to be a hotshot lawyer in a big city where they don’t know his name? “I thought this was what you wanted.” Dan said quietly, as if he was a child once more. “I thought you wanted me to become a lawyer, mum.” He repeated it once more and looked at his mother with glassy eyes. “Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to become a divorce lawyer to protect wives from men like dad?”

His mother shook his head insistently. “Yes, Daniel. But I never said I wanted you to be a heartless monster who has no care for others.”

 

Dan looked at his mother with a glare, and walked out. He wanted to make sure he had the last word, but his mother’s words about feeling like she was losing him stuck irritatingly in his mind. Somewhere along the way Dan had lost himself, too.

He didn’t want to seem creepy or obsessive, but there were so many new shops and places that Dan never noticed that it felt like he was in another town. Dan had always compulsively called himself a Londoner, but not once in the eleven days did he miss his scruffy apartment on the fifteenth floor. For the rest of the day, he aimlessly wandered around the main strip of shops basking in a rare day of warmth and sun. At every corner, Dan wished that he ran into Phil, and said something charming and bashful and yet painfully tone-deaf.

Dan didn’t know why, but that fact scared him. He was scared that he would mess things up, that the heartbeat pounding insistently was more emotional than it was medical. Truth was, Dan felt guilty. He felt like he had committed a mortal sin, that he had broken a barrier by swarming Phil with aunts and uncles that he barely knew the names of himself.

Dan found himself reliant on muscle memory to retrace the steps back to Phil’s flat on the other side of town. All around him he saw Phil, and it scared him. For most of his life, Dan had been unfathomably indifferent to romantic relationships seeing as he was constantly surrounded by failed marriages. He always felt untouchable, and it was as if Phil had gutted him clean and made him a new person. Dan wanted to wait a day before he went to Phil, but the same impulsive spark electrified him. He wanted to go to Phil, right now. He had stayed in his idyllic hometown for eleven days now, and eleven days from now he’ll be in a cubicle poring over divorces. He desperately wanted to go back to his work, but right now the only thing that made sense to Dan was to go over to Phil, just so he could get through tonight.

Even light years away from his conversation earlier in the day with his mother, her precautionary words came back to him with a sharp taste filling his mouth.  _ I don’t know who you are, Daniel. It feels like I’m losing you. _

Dan took a slow breath, because as he rounded the curb a block away from Phil’s residence, he felt himself losing a part of who he was before. He didn’t want to break away from the mold that he spent years building with his mother’s worried glare burnished in his mind, but even so he felt himself losing, changing. He knew that his mother was scared of the impulsive and daring Dan Howell, but Dan knew he was losing himself for the better.

* * *

Dan steeled himself, as he tried to thing of a bullet point list that would make sense to Phil. As his hand trembled over the buzzer, he cursed himself for spending his fifteen minute walk over trying to divine an epiphany from his mother’s words instead of crafting a worthy apology for Phil.

He saw the name  _ Lester  _ scrawled on hastily in bright green pen, and he hit the buzzer, waiting for Phil to buzz him in. “Hello?” Phil asked, over the crackly intercom.

“It’s Dan.” He took a deep breath and stared down at the hem he was subconsciously fraying. “Can we talk?”

He waited a moment and then wondered frantically if Phil had disconnected and left Dan outside just as the door buzzed in. “Come in.” Phil mumbled, trying to sound as amiable as possible.

 

They took seats opposite each other and Phil set down a cup of tea for both of them. He did all of this wordlessly, and Dan felt like a stranger in a place that he had visited before. Phil looked at Dan expectantly. “I’m really sorry.” Dan said earnestly, exhaling as the weight on his chest lifts. “I didn’t mean to push you in between me and fourteen other relatives.” He explained, as Phil blinked at Dan.

"You’re mad at me because you think that I was uncomfortable being your plus one to the gathering?” Phil asked, looking at Dan with wide eyes. Dan nodded slowly, while Phil shook his head and rubbed his temples. “No, Dan. No, no, no. I’m not angry at that, I literally  I’m upset because you threw me aside to talk uncomfortably with your aunt about your love life, and didn’t bother to accompany me for thirty minutes.”

Dan exhaled, as he looked at Phil guiltily. “I’m truly sorry, Phil. I didn’t mean for it to happen like that. I really like you. I really like being your friend.” He admitted.

“I know. Me too.” Phil replied, nodding tersely. “I just think things are moving too fast. Maybe we should start over.”

Dan smiled softly in agreement. “Yes, I think we should.” His words were laced with opportunity to expound, but the dwindled into an uncomfortable silence that felt unfillable.

Some minutes later, Phil smiled. “So, your name is Daniel.”

“Phil Lester. Your name is Phil Lester.” Dan repeated, like a spell.

Phil smiled bashfully and shook his head. “Big deal. I didn’t know everyone called you Daniel!”

The laughter died down and Dan looked at Phil quietly. “Yeah, even at work.” Dan added with a small shrug. “I guess I’ve always wanted to be called Dan, but never got the chance?”

 

Dan knew the real reason was because when he was  _ Daniel,  _ he was this know it all loveless maniac who was cynical and daring and brave. He was cold when he wanted to be and never let his guard down.  _ Dan,  _ on the other hand tried to be compassionate and kind. He tried to be open and fair and own up to his mistakes. Dan only ever let Phil into the kind side of him, the side that tried his hardest to listen, and feel the emotion as it courses around the room.

“To be honest,” Dan added, after a beat of silence. “Sometimes I’m not sure where Daniel ends and Dan begins.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Daniel is rigid, and stern. But Dan, you’re wonderful. You’re-you’re,  _ bucolic. _ ” Phil said, stammering slightly. Dan looked around, and the room seemed to be teeming with possibility.

“I don’t even know what that word means.” Dan said, with a soft chuckle.

Phil laughed and shook his head. “Don’t worry. I don’t either, which is why it totally describes who you are, a word that not many know the meaning of, one that looks and sounds open and beautiful yet rare. Just like you.”

Dan wanted to take a deep breath and die in this moment. He wanted to know the answers to the questions that swim in his mind, and yet he knew that they were moving too fast. Dan and Phil were moving awfully too fast that Dan might freak Phil out if he took the next step. And so, instead of stepping forward, he backed down; just for tonight.

Dan stood up and made his way to the door, ignoring how Phil’s face fell. “It’s getting dark. I should go.”

Phil tried to stifle a smile and looked at Dan cheerily. “Of course. Good night, Dan.”

 

Dan smiled at Phil, and it was charming and fluid and genuine. It was filled with meaning and the promise of something better tomorrow. He smiled, and his veins felt like they were filled with stardust instead of white noise. “Good night, Phil.”


	6. A song of reawakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan Howell can change the mood of a conversation smoother than a knife slit across the throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty short chapter, I'm sorry! Hopefully the bombs dropped in this chapter seem well timed and not hasty.

There was an unspoken promise that Dan and Phil would see each other daily, and so the next day Dan was hardly surprised when Phil strolled into the plant shop just minutes before the sunset and the end of his shift.

 

“I take it you’re still mad at me?” Phil said, as Dan continued polishing the table without lifting his head.

Dan shook his head adamantly. “Not at all. It’s just that you come in here so often that I can recognise you by your gait and walking pace.” He replied flatly, looking up to meet Phil’s eyes.

“You want to go back to my place after your shift?” Phil asked, swinging on his heels and stuffing his hands into his jean pockets.

Dan scoffed at Phil and rolled his eyes. “We always go to your place. My mum is out until Monday so I have the place to myself for three days.” He looked at Phil with an indiscernible smile while his tone was flat. “It’s like I’m a teenager again.”

Phil chuckled and looked at Dan with a smile playing on his lips. “Well, how can I say no?”

 

“I thought it was only fitting that I brought you to my place for real, especially after dragging you into that crowd.” Dan replied to Phil as they walked into the driveway. Thirty minutes later and one fresh pair of clothes after, Dan found himself unlocking the door for his tiny childhood home.

“It’s a little small because it was just me and my mum growing up, but its functional.” Dan said, giving Phil a fair warning whilst scratching his neck.

“I grew up in a shoebox apartment with both my parents and my brother. This feels like a mansion to me.” Phil replied, taking a step into the quintessential English countryside home. “I always wanted to live in something like this when I was younger.”

Dan took a breath of the sandalwood scented air and smiled, jutting out his thumb in the direction of the patio. “Let’s go into the garden, yeah?”

 

Twenty minutes, one picnic blanket, and a bowl of peaches later, Dan and Phil found themselves basking in the late afternoon setting sun.

“Why are you just letting me into your house? I’ve known you for less than two weeks.” Phil mused.

Dan shook his head. “You invited me to your flat within 72 hours of meeting you. It only felt right.” He replied, looking at Phil intently in the eye.”You barely knew who I was.”

Phil moved his head so that he had a view of both Dan and the setting sun behind him. “Yeah, well. It felt like I’ve known you forever.”

“Me too.” Dan gushed, lowering his head bashfully. “I’ve never known anyone like you, Phil.”

Phil chuckled and cleared his throat. “Is that a compliment?”

“I can’t think of a reason why I’d like to insult you.” Dan whispered, moving closer to Phil.

Dan could feel the heat of Phil’s smirk, as they casted shadows on the lawn. The first stars were sparking up the sky, and the night would come again. Phil moved closer, as he tried to bridge the gap between them two.

 

Dan pulled away abruptly, as if he had just been burned. He looked at himself shamefully and moved closer to Phil. “I want this to work.” Dan whispered, eyes flicking up at Phil’s. Dan tried to ignore how flashes of hurt clouded over in Phil’s eyes.

Phil flicked his eyes to the left timidly. “We’ll make it work.” Phil breathed, the tips of his words making the tips of Dan’s ears flare red.

“I like you, Phil.” Dan said, looking at Phil apologetically. “But we’re moving too fast. We’re just friends.”

Phil gulped, and looked at the blanket of stars that were suffocating him.

* * *

“You’re here early.” Dan mumbled flatly to Phil, without even lifting his head. Dan was used to Phil coming in early on certain days, but he was expecting Phil to make a detour due to their catastrophic picnic last night.

Dan should apologise to Phil. It was his fault that Phil read into things and thought they were having a date. Dan knew his life plans. Next year he would start dating a pretty lady from the city and be married with children by 32. Phil was already 31, and he was an artist over two hours away from London. Even if Dan was keen to be with Phil, there was just no way it would work.

Phil shrugged. “I’ve got a meeting in town this weekend.” He said, touching a leafy plant with his index finger and thumb. “Decided to stop by before I skip town for a few days.” He replied, eyes connecting with Dan’s.

Dan raised his gaze and gulped. “What do you mean?”

Phil looked around, dropping his grasp from the plant. “I’m gonna be away this weekend.”

Dan inhaled deeply and nodded as they returned to their positions. Dan worked, Phil painted. Dan watered plants and played music grossly inappropriate for the serene plant shop setting, and Phil worked quietly yet diligently on his painting. Every now and then there would be small talk and banter, but for the most part the plant shop served as an avenue for purpose. There were never any large or intimate talks, because everything felt too harsh and unforgiving in the cold light of day.

“Where to?” Dan asked, while he was busy polishing the window.

Phil shrugged from behind a thicket of foliage. “Canterbury.” He said, with a tight-lipped smile. “I’ve been asked to send revisions for my designs of an advertisement for the Canterbury Pride Parade.”

Dan raised his eyebrows, and Phil smiled at him. It felt like things had gone back to normal for a minute, before they reverted back to their somber demeanor.

By midday, Phil began to pack up his things. Dan wanted to say something, but his throat felt dry. As Phil walked out of the store with a smile pointed at Dan, he waved foolishly.

Dan had the rest of his shift to stew silently with his thoughts. He was always a talker, he always had a comeback for everything. He was witty and yet skilled at small talk against his wishes, and yet he couldn’t find it in him to say goodbye to Phil. It wasn’t as if Dan expected Phil to drop everything just for a stranger he had just met, but he couldn’t get the mental image of his mouth going dry and paling at the thought of saying goodbye to Phil for the weekend. If that was him parting with Phil for a few days, what would happen when he would leave for London?

“Wait.” Dan said, holding a hand out as Phil froze. “I’m sorry.” Dan replied for the thousandth time. He would always feel indebted to Phil no matter the circumstance.

Phil smiled and walked closer to Dan. “Of course. It’s totally okay Dan.” He said, nudging Dan slightly. “Hey, when I get back let's continue watching that film on Netflix, okay?” Phil tried to sound encouraging, but his words sounded vacant and empty while the sincerity never reached his eyes.

Dan nodded his head. “See you soon.”

 

Dan sighed as he walked the trek back home. He was always alone with his thoughts alone in the countryside, and yet it always felt serene. Dan liked to spend time just thinking, but in this moment he couldn’t stand being alone with his mind. It was as if his mind wasn’t fast enough to catch up with his body. He was an organized scatterbrain, and always thought a million things at once without losing a single trail of thought. It was a gift at times, when he had to juggle a string of loosely connected menial tasks. He was a scatterbrain since his adolescence, and yet back home all he could think about was Phil. All he could think of was something genuine yet dry enough to elicit one of those smiles that Phil did wherein he poked out his tongue just slightly, the kind of smile that made Dan’s heart do a backflip.

He decided to take a detour and walk to the local library, which was a laptop and a small bookshelf more than anything. Five minutes later, he was sat in front of a laptop that ended it’s circulation circa 1970. It was old and slow, but it did the job. Dan entered his search into the search engine with trepidation.  _ “Phil Lester” _

What Dan was surprised to see was hundreds upon hundreds of street art, murals, portraits, and advertisements in his personal portfolio. Along with that, he also saw a handful of interviews from local papers and news stations.

 

_ “I am joined now with Phil Lester, who was recently embroiled in some controversy in the campaign he designed for a jewelry company.”  _

Dan looked on with intrigue as the same Phil Lester sat in a conference room on the other side of the screen.  _ “What is there to discuss?” Phil’s voice was flat but his eyes sparkled. “I was asked to create a promotional for a new line of wedding rings, so I created two posters. One with two women celebrating their engagement to each other and one of two men. I do not want more kids like me to grow up in a world where they think straight is the only thing they can be. They should know that they have every right to be someone. It is primordial, love and love itself.” _

What preceded was a back and forth interview with an indignant Phil, who was hellbent on defended his marketing campaign. To his surprise, Dan found himself on Phil’s side. More than that, he found himself agreeing with Phil.

 

As he walked back home and trudged all the way up the stairs, he was itching to get his mind to stop, and yet his brain begged him to think with wild abandon. He thought of the way Phil listened with his eyes and years. He thought of the way Phil held open doors and tipped generously, he thought of the way Dan snuggled into Phil that night of shameless Netflix watching. He thought of the deep, blue eyes that were an amalgamation of what Dan thought to be the sky and the sea building a soul from scratch. No single individual as genuine and kind and yet as charming as Phil could ever find the graces to meet someone as cynical and melancholy as Dan.

He knew not of love. Dan was a divorce lawyer, he knew about ante-love. Dan knew about what wasn’t love, he knew about all the things that happened once someone fell out of love.

 

_ “Miss Morgan, what is your case?” Daniel asked, shuffling a manila folder in between his fidgety hands. _

_ Adeline Morgan looked at Dan with tears brimming her eyes. She knew she had to get straight to the point, meetings with mediators like him were not cheap in the slightest. “I just don’t love him anymore, Attorney.” _

_ “And how did you feel when you did love him, Miss Morgan?” Dan asked plainly, as he was instructed to do on the typewritten script operating under the guise of a guide of instructions. _

_ “A spark. He made me feel alive. Shawn, he made me want to go out there and live. He always kept me on my feel, he always made me feel like i was carrying the sun. _

 

Dan groaned into his pillow. That was one case out of many, but his mind began racing with the many clients he dealt with over the years.

 

_ “Miss Brooklyn Scott-Foster.” Dan said, in a tone that sounded condoning. “What are your grounds for divorce?”  _

_ Brooklyn shook her short tawny hair exasperatingly. Dan looked down at his files. Brooklyn was an accomplished American poet who fell in love with James Foster from England. “When we were young and in love, we felt like the day belonged to us. We felt like we deserved each other like the sun deserved the stars. I had run a teenage escapade for too long, and it felt like I was falling in love with the feeling of being alive when I was with him.” _

 

Dan thought back to Phil, his skin the colour of the snow in December, his hair a creamy black, his eyes deep blue. He thought of Adeline Morgan, telling him that she felt a spark, as if she was carrying the sun. Dan didn’t feel like a spark, he felt like a stick of dynamite constantly at the brink of explosion. Dan didn’t feel like he was carrying the sun, it felt as if the sun was lifting him up and showing him all the good and the finer things in life.

Dan thought back to Phil. Dan thought of Brooklyn Scott-Foster, who felt as if they were renegades on a mission when she was in love. Dan felt as if he could barely contain all the goodness flowing out of Phil, he felt as if he was running from reality because no reality could be as good as one with Phil in it.

Dan felt like he was lost, but in the right direction. He felt like looking at Phil was the winter thaw, the first days of spring. He thought of the sky and the stars and the bemusement of existence. He buried his head deeper into his pillow and thought about how his relatives told him that he was still single because he “hadn’t found the right one”. He hadn’t found the right one, because he was looking in all the wrong places. 

Dan was looking at coworkers and dating apps and all the ‘fail safe’ ways to find love. He had been looking for love when he needed it to look for him instead. He spent days thinking of love as a girl in his arms and with love in his eyes. He saw the wives and girlfriends of his male coworkers and thought he was loveless. He saw the way they connected and thought he was broken inside. It wasn’t him who was broken, it was society. It was society making something the default when there should be room for all types of love.

It was Phil. It was Phil all along. It was carrying the stars and something forbidden and something beautiful and pure. It was taking engrained social beliefs and taboos that have sustained and persisted for thousands of years, and making Dan realise that love was not constricted to gender. It was making sure to return the favour and go the extra mile. It was tempting and taunting and tantalising fate. It was scary and ultimately worth it in the end. They had called him heartless when he didn’t reciprocate feelings for female lovers, but he felt like his heart could burst at the seams.

 

He had loved Phil since the day he had met him, even if he didn't know it yet. Dan didn’t know what that meant just yet, he didn’t know if that was bad or good, but he closed his eyes and it felt like reawakening.


	7. Heartachefree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoving feel-good emotions had never been less discreet. A soft reprieve, the calm before the storm.  
> Content advisory: Light use of alcoholic drinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s title is inspired and dedicated to the first ever Dan and Phil fanfiction I read over 3 years ago (that has since been taken down) entitled “Heartbreakfree” by ‘cliquot’ or Hannah. Thank you Han, you are the reason I write today.

In fairy tales and in the lands of make-believe, it is a preconceived ill fated notion that the first tastes of love, the first realisations of obsessions and tantalisations dawn on an individual all at once. Being struck with Cupid’s Bow is much akin to being hit by a truck, or so the story goes. In reality, Daniel Howell had learnt things the hard way. The realisation was almost bittersweet, a homecoming of sorts. The realisation that  _ yes, _ it had been Phil Lester all along was bitter as well, because  _ how could he be so blind? _ He had pushed Phil away for being too forthcoming on their sunset-speckled date and yet, Dan wanted to fly his soul all the way to Brighton and die in Phil’s arms. The hopeless romantic in him had been reawakened, taking flight and finding home like a newborn dove. Phil was in Brighton for a day and a half, and certainly there was never a worse time to come to the realisation that a boy likes another boy.

Then, after the wondrous and slightly bitter realisation hits Dan as if a wave washed over a shore, he was filled with thick and roiling dread. He had pushed Phil away, he had made Phil think he wasn’t the slightest in love with him when Dan was just repressing his inner fears. He was afraid to love, and he was afraid that he would become just like the clients that he served. Dan’s worst flaw was his ineffable pride, the fact that he could never admit that he was at fault. He was stupidly proud and incredibly dense, and Dan could hardly believe that Phil had come into his life at all. There was still that incredible niggling sensation at the back of Dan’s mind that made him believe that he had misinterpreted Phil’s actions, he had misinterpreted and mistook Phil’s kindness for flirtation.

His mind was a mess and was all over the place, and he could only think that maybe he did the dumb teenage thing wherein Dan fell in love with the idea of the person and not the person at all. His heart was aching so much with all these questions he was trained to think the opposite of. Dan’s heart was overflowing with something foreign, and he wanted to be rid of it.

 

Dan carried the same lethargy into the morning. His mother would return late into the evening of tomorrow, usually going into town with friends and staying over. She loved the quaint village where she had raised Dan, but the pattern of it all seemed to suffocate her at times. He still rose later than he would if he was still working in London, but earlier than usual. Rebecca’s familiar voice asked him last night to cover for her morning shift and she’ll work his night shift. On any other day, he would have done anything he could to remain selfish, but his thoughts were going to swarm and choke him if he didn’t bury his heart ache in work at the first rays of dawn.

As he reported groggily to the plant shop at work, he wearily looked on as Rebecca tended to the plants. She had just gotten off of the graveyard shift, and Rebecca had never looked worse for wear. It was their, in Dan’s sleepy daze and miscommunication did the stars align and he once more had another reawakening. “Rebecca Worthington. That’s where I knew you from.” Dan exclaimed, albeit monotonously. Rebecca spun around and lifted her eyebrows at Dan inquisitively.  

Rebecca’s strawberry blonde hair seemed too foolish in the harsh daylight. She smirked mischievously, as if she was waiting the whole time to tell Dan that she knew. “Still an idiot I see, Howell.” She chided teasingly, laughing softly. 

Dan chuckled. Had it really taken him almost a week to remember Rebecca? “It’s the red hair, Bec. I’m not used to seeing you with anything but jet black hair and thick black eyeliner.”

* * *

 

By the time Dan Howell had finished his first two years of high school, there was a mutual dependency on Rebecca “Bec” Worthington. When the football teams were kicking the ball around the pitch and the fifteen year old girls were fawning over their sweat-soaked bodies, Dan had found himself under an elm tree in the middle of the two rival high schools. Around the fifth time he had skipped gym class (and skipped getting rocks thrown at him) his aimless reading of Victorian literature was halted when an inky black shadow casted over him. When he looked up, he saw a face he didn’t recognise.

“Can I help you?” Dan asked, as he blinked slowly up at the girl with a million piercings, black hair, and the thinnest plucked eyebrows in the world.

Bec stuck out her hand teasingly. “Bec.” She said flippantly, sniffing the air around her. Dan took her as a bit of a prude, if not for the layers upon layers of black. “Bec Worthington.” She said haughtily, with purpose. Bec sat down beside Dan and opened her own thick book of Greco-Roman history. For the next few weeks, they would meet under the elm tree in between the two schools. Both introverts were never much for interaction, and they made little to no conversation. When their two schools rivalled down at the football pitch, the only words they said under the elm tree were, “Could you move to the left, I have no shade.” or simple commands and questions, such as asking the times of the day. 

 

This would continue for the better half of the semester, until one day Bec stopped showing up to the elm tree. Like most things, Dan shrugged it off. He knew better than to dwell on petty high school feuds and squabbles. He had greater things in store, but still remembered the company one girl gave him for one semester of skipping football games.

It wasn’t a surprise that Dan forgot about Rebecca Worthington’s existence. Every single memory from his school days were laced with something rotten lurking just beneath it’s shiny exterior.Truth be told, Dan never really liked Bec. She was a squeamish, snobby girl who asked for hair dye and eyeliner and My Chemical Romance merchandise to make herself seem different and ‘not like other girls’ when in reality, she also used designer handbags and brand-name makeup. There was nothing wrong with being the quintessential stereotypical girl, Dan figured, but something bothered him about girls saying one thing and doing another. Present day Bec goes by her given name, and doesn’t try to dye or straighten her curly red hair. Nonetheless, Dan couldn’t shake the image of an obscenely fake Bec dripping inky black hair dye onto her scalp and applying the palest foundation she could afford. 

* * *

Maybe that was why no girl never truly caught his eye. Present day Bec smiled at him, and nudged his shoulder. “Wanna go for a drink after closing?” Bec asked politely. They were hardly friends, just misfits at the wrong place and at the wrong time.

Former Dan, the one that didn’t have this newfound realisation of love in him would say something dry and sarcastic. He would shake his head wearily and say, “Thirty percent of alcoholics that have marriages later in life end in divorce.” But this Dan, the carefree and kind of terrified one, nodded his head and croaked out a  _ yes.  _ He could still see Phil’s face glimmering sickeningly at him. There was a sadistic form of guilt rising up in him, a fear of a confession as old as time.

 

Dan smiled and nodded, something he was classically accustomed to doing. “I’d like that.” He answered to Bec flatly.

He wanted to get his mind off of Phil, and all the precedents that had happened before. The idea that confessing a crush to someone that might not reciprocate those feelings were familiar feelings felt by most human beings. It was a universal feeling, but all the sentiments of being something other than straight, all the layers of labels, all the terms of sexualities enveloping him seemed to be a battle fought by individuals in isolation. Dan didn’t pride himself on being educated on LGBT issues, for the very fact that it never played a role in his career. What he had known and was quickly realising however, was that every person that identified under the homosexuality spectrum had a different experience from the last.

 

As Bec walked out of the store, Dan allowed himself a reprieve to think things he never thought before. He always kept the old notion that many divorce lawyers never married or their marriages ended in flames, but many of his senior coworkers were happily married. He could feel the vessels pop and burst in Phil’s heart two days ago, when he pulled away from the freak moment of intimacy that Phil showed. Maybe if Dan picked up on the verbal signs, the words Phil used to indicate he was the slightest bit interested in Dan they would be together. And yet, Phil was an artist, and he had more to say on a canvas than he would ever say in his lifetime.

Phil’s art was something rare and sacred, it wasn’t just his livelihood but also a passion of his. Dan was invited up to the space where Phil creates, he was invited into Phil’s life. It didn’t matter now, because he could still see the reject and hurt flickering in Phil’s lapis coloured eyes every single time he blinked.

His heart was beating rapidly, under the still and idle observation of a sleepy plant shop just south of London. How could he be so blind, when he worked in the field of romance and relationships. Albeit his specialty the separation of two lovers, he used all his knowledge into trying to make things right. His plan sounded counterintuitive, and he was antsy all day when he knew Phil would be back tomorrow. His plan, if he barely had one, was to tell Phil his faults and pray to any godly being that Dan’s hints about Phil’s feelings for him were true.

Dan seemed like the kind of person that could hold secrets for long periods of time, but he was bad at keeping secrets and painfully blunt in revealing them. He had never dealt with the kind of crush that he had on Phil, the kind that not everyone in society accepted. 

There were hardly any customers in the plant shop, and even less in sales. Dan spent the day trying not to freak himself out and without the aid of the internet, forced to stumble upon and medicate his self induced sexuality-slash-identity crisis all on his own. How did any of the youth in the generations before figure out who they were without the answers at their fingertips?

 

Later in the evening, when Dan strolled into the generic looking British pub, he couldn’t help but feel unbelievably glum. He was honestly not in the mood for socialising at the moment, his confused past few days making way for a newfound sadness at the prospect of unrequited love.

Bec brightened when she saw Dan walk in, and ordered beers for the two of them. Dan wanted to politely inform Bec that he barely drank, but he wanted to think of something other than Phil. He took a sip of the sweet, tart, beer and winced. Bec looked on in a stupor, clearly having had a few drinks beforehand. “Drink a lot in The Smoke?” She asked, with the trademark barmy twang in her voice.

Dan coughed. “I don’t drink at all, really.”

Bec put on her most lopsided smile and grinned to Dan. “Then why all of a sudden you agree to go for a drink with an almost complete stranger? We have nothing in common other than the few weeks when we shared a tree, you know.” She asked, in a sing song like voice.

Dan could feel his senses fuzzing slightly, but not enough for him to be completely out of sync with his movements. “Yeah, but you recalled who I was even before I knew who you were. You must have remembered me, and people don’t usually remember complete strangers.” Dan responded, taking another heavy swig of his beer.

Bec rolled her eyes. “I hand pick every employee applicant, even if they just walk in without a scheduled job interview. I looked you up on FaceBook, and you went to my rival school.”

“That’s all you have?” Dan asked, raising his eyebrows in suspicion.

She smirked. “Oh, and you imported your MySpace photos into your early FaceBook feed. I recognized you then, because some of those photos I remember from when we were contacts on there.”

Dan took another sip and chuckled, loud and boisterous and something not belonging to him. “You win. I did just agree to get drinks with a practical stranger, but only to get my mind off being cooped up in my family home.” 

Her eyes widened. “Oooh, drama.” She clapped both her hands to the sides of her cheeks. “Tell me, is it mommy troubles? Daddy troubles?” 

Dan stayed silent. He knew Bec from his youth, but that didn’t mean he was obligated to divulge his deepest secrets. 

Bec smirked slyly, as if she had just unlocked the secrets of the universe in her alcoholic daze. “Okay, is it girl troubles?”

Dan continued to stay silent, but her insinuation still rubbed him the wrong way. “Okay, then.” Bec said, holding up her hands in protest. “Is it boy troubles?” She asked in a faux low whisper voice, snickering softly.

Dan tried to recall a fact on how drunk people had a tendency to black out and not remember certain points of the previous night, and it was that fact buried in the recesses of his mind that gave Dan the confidence to speak his mind. “Actually, it is.”

Bec rolled her eyes. “Missing your boy back home?” She said, taking another sip of a drink with a dangerously high alcohol content.

Dan’s quickly reddening cheeks darkened, as he turned his eyes away. There was no going back to who he was before, a loveless monster in the disguise of a six foot two white guy with curly hair. “Phil Lester.” He said, with finality and just a hint of fear.  There was no boyfriend Dan had before Phil, there was nobody Dan wanted to be with in the way he wanted to be with Phil.

“So you’re gay?” She asked, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

Dan sighed. “I don’t know  _ what  _ I am, and I don’t see any pressure to label myself. I like Phil, and that should be that.” He blinked. “How did you even know it was Phil, anyways?”

Bec sighed, long and grandiose. “I’ve seen you two stare each other down and undress the other with your eyes. I’ve seen Phil look at you with more love and affection than any romantic partner he had for months. I don’t know you that well, but you don’t seem the type to go hunting around for any random person’s phone number, so when you called me that night I figured Phil Lester isn’t any random person to you, at all.”

Dan gawked as Bec continued her drunken rambling. “I’m just joking, Dan. But by the way you look like you’ve been exposed, I don’t think I was wrong.” She replied smugly.

 

Dan sighed. He was never the type to expose his true emotions. It was one of the cardinal virtues of being a lawyer, making sure to mislead the opposition by appearing cold and unflinching. Every past motive, every past white noise that had flowed throughout his veins had been blown out and flooded with all encompassing  _ feeling _ . He felt so greatly and so terrifyingly for a moment that his own emotional capability scared him. His heart was so awake, so aware of every emotion it felt that he felt stuck in a sacred twilight, a period of obscurity and ambiguity. He was so in tune with his emotions, and all there was left to do was confess.

He was thinking of all the beautiful things, all the things that were the opposite of his job description. Dan used to think he was above love itself, because he had seen the terrifying and nasty things it had done when it had soured. In reality, they were the lucky ones because they had felt such an all encompassing hunger to be loved and they felt love. They were in love, and no matter what happened after, they felt love instead of white noise.

His heart was overflowing and beating in tune with his mind. “You’re not wrong, at all.”

 

For a moment, all the worries and all the consequences felt insignificant. He was on the cusp of revelation, he was moving away from confusion and sadness and terror. Dan finally saw his actions for what they were. Dan’s love for Phil could never die, it taunted death with all of its beauty. 


	8. From Lester, with admiration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Staying hurt is never easy. Be quick to forgive, easy to love, and hard to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa double update! I want to finish this before the end of July but don't worry! We aren't nearing the end just yet.

Dan lay idly on his creaky bed, basking in the midday sun. Phil would be back in a few hours, and he was too busy collecting his thoughts to focus on anything else. He lay in his room quietly, letting the inescapable silence envelop him. Since he had accepted that he was doomed Romeo-and-Juliet style, he had decided to drown himself in the very thought of Phil Lester.

As he rose from his bed slowly, washed his face and the memories of yesterday, he entertained the Devil’s advocate in him and think of whether Phil even wanted to see him. There was no way to correspond with Phil, as he continually berated himself for not bringing his phone. The only way to see if Dan was to face complete and utter rejection was to walk the fifteen minute stroll to Phil’s apartment, the very place Dan caught feelings in the beginning.

The soles of his shoes crunched the cracking pavement, squashing the crocus and the wildflower that grew in the gaps of the sidewalk. Even in this small town, everyone around him watched their screens instead of each other. He hated feeling so out of touch, but he felt more in tune with himself than ever before. Away from the smoky London fog away in the crisp air of the countryside, Dan felt newly born, cut wide open and indelible from sin.

 

When he knocked on Phil’s door, Phil answered. Dan used to think love was an emptiness, a weakness. But as he connected with Phil’s electric, expressive eyes, he knew that love wasn’t a question. For most of his life, it had been one of the biggest contemplations of his existence. As he saw Phil, he knew in that moment for the first time with sharp clarity that it was not a question at all.

Love was a truth.

Love, for all intents and purposes was a terrifying, beautiful truth. Love was a truth that revealed itself in the ugliest parts of your soul. And for Dan, love shone through the cracks of everything he stood for. When he looked at Phil, Dan knew it was the best thing that he ever felt. The all encompassing fear, the all encompassing love. It was sheer terror, but it was also the source of all of Dan’s happiness. Phil’s eyes felt like they could crucify Dan and take him to hell.

 

Phil exhaled in confusion and looked at Dan. Dan smiled, and mustered up all the courage he could.

“I’m sorry.” Dan said, eyes glassy and heart pounding. “I was stupid, and selfish, and a total idiot. I was only thinking of myself.”

Phil’s brow knotted together as he held up one hand calmly. He looked tired, but alive. “What are you talking about, Dan?”

Dan shook his head insistently. “I was stupid. When I said I wanted to take things slowly. I have only a week left before I go back to working a desk job and I can’t take things slowly when I’m doing everything _now._ ” He looked at Phil. “And then, you left for a work job and I was scared that I frightened you, or sent you the wrong message that I don’t ever want to see you again.”

There it was, in the open. Things were unstable and scary, but time was still. Choirs didn’t sing, the heavens never parted. Far into the future there will be nobody to remember Van Gogh or Cleopatra, nonetheless two people who had met under the strangest circumstances. but in this moment the future had their eye on these two boys. In this moment, time was still, life was theirs.

Phil sighed. “Of course I was hurt, Dan. I like you, but I thought that wasn’t what you wanted when you said you wanted to take things slow. I understand now, because we’re two separate people with two different lives and I was going to cancel the meeting I had yesterday just to spend time with you. I left in a hurry, because you were right. Love should empower, not be a hindrance."

Dan smiled, as Phil stepped aside and let him pass through. “I don’t know what I want, Phil.” He said, looping his pinky finger around to latch onto Phil’s finger. “But I want to start somewhere. Let’s take things slow, but allow things to happen as they are.”

Phil flashed Dan a toothy grin. “Couldn’t have said it better.”

The two of them walked in step to the couch and television set. As Dan sat on one end and Phil sat on another, Phil laughed dryly. “Maybe I should take you on a proper date some day.”

 _Date._ Dan had realised that there was no coming back, there was no re-entering a closet he didn’t know he was trapped in. They had not said anything about dating, and yet both of the ways their body language was told everything they did not have the courage to say. “I don’t want a proper date. I want you.”

Phil tried to conceal his blush by laughing into his sweater sleeve. Dan could feel his heart flip over, as Phil giggled into his sleeve. “I thought you said we were going to take things slow!” Phil exclaimed indignantly, shoving Dan lightly.

Dan could feel the tips of his ears turn pink. “Yeah, but we also said that we’d allow things to happen as they do. Besides, every time I’m with you is good enough.” He said flatly, with a hint of a smile playing on his lips.

Phil shook his head, as he moved closer to Dan. “I never knew you were gay.”

Dan scoffed. “Labels are for clothing, not for humans. I don’t think I am gay, the only thing I’m sure of is you. I like you Phil.” It was the perfect midday Sunday, sitting around doing nothing.

Dan was sure that he could hear Phil getting choked up. “Let’s take things slow.” Was all that Phil whispered, lips ticking the skin of Dan’s ears lightly.

Dan had spent the worse half of fourteen years debating on how to break the news; that Dan’s job was the final say in a relationship. He had thought there would be some sort of scary and terrifying emotional lead up. It had felt like a vast heaviness in his heart, but in this moment it felt true and organic.

 

“Does your opinion of me change if I told you I was a divorce lawyer?”

Dan could feel Phil tense up, but he relaxed a moment later. “No, Dan.”

Dan had spent so long, worrying and fretting about the question, the terrible admission that felt terrible only in his mind. Phil had brushed the largest worry of Dan’s under the rug, and it felt like a release of all the tension he was unknowingly holding in him. Dan exhaled a gust of hot air, sighing with such a relief as his heartbeat slowed down. The last barrier that separated Dan from Daniel had melted. His two lives were merged, the one where he worked as a successful, white-noise no nonsense lawyer and the one that had awoken with wild abandon when he met Phil. His walls were melting away, and he moved closer to Phil until there was no part of skin left untouched.

* * *

 

By the time the movies and TV shows had melted together and the sun dipped into the horizon and painted Phil’s loft in the colours of twilight, Dan wanted to stay wrapped in Phil’s arms. All of a sudden he realised why Phil wanted to move faster, because after getting a taste of warm love it was never enough. It was impossible to describe, because all of the metaphors felt too grand. There were no words simple enough to describe the feeling of Phil’s chest rising and falling in sync with Dan’s heartbeat. This moment may be entirely lost to them in the future, and for that reason it made their time together that much sacred.

Dan moved his neck and craned to see Phil who had dozed off to sleep. He wanted this, he _needed_ this. He was learning the distinction between want and need. Dan didn’t need the work, but he wanted it. Dan needed this, he needed the quiet with a muffled American laugh track playing in the background.

He wanted to excuse himself, shake Phil slightly and head off. The brief realisation that Phil could have been up since the early hours of dawn working on matters unbeknownst to Dan stopped him cold. Instead, Dan pulled the woollen blanket over the curled up Phil and pried himself softly out of Phil’s gaze.

Dan made a promise to Phil that he would take things slowly, no grand romantic gestures. But as he turned off the television and turned the cooling system on, Dan decided to make a promise to himself that every day he would do something for Phil. Something small, something of great importance and care. Today it was putting a fluffy cushion for Phil to rest his head on.

As he walked out of Phil’s flat, he smelled the lingering scent of vanilla and warmth dangle on his coat fabric. He walks outside, and there’s still a cluster of people walking on the pavement at the same time as him.

He sees someone texting on the opposite side of him, and Dan wondered if he was texting his wife, or husband. Dan sees his reflection, complacent and loopy in a puddle. The image trails him home, and Dan realises that he entered Phil’s house as a guest but he left with a part of him finding home in Phil, in Phil’s house. Dan wanted to stay, but he knew Phil would berate Dan. Something about their invisible line they drew for themselves felt constricting, but it had given Dan more breathing space than he had in years.

 

The next day, Bec was in the back office doing the backlog of paperwork that Dan was never assigned to do.

Bec whistled from the back, hailing Dan down. She set down the stack of papers and stood up when Dan entered the room. “Last five days of work, huh?” Bec teased, slipping Dan last week’s paycheque.

Dan gulped. He had only seven days before he had to return to work once more, and this was the last work week he would have at the plant shop.The feeling that had started to swell in Dan was unexplainable. Leaving a place you don’t want to abandon is a sensation everyone had felt. The feeling Dan was experiencing however, was the inescapable weight of looming dread. Of upcoming leaving home.

Dan cracked Bec a smile and chuckled. “As much as I hated wiping the windows, I really enjoyed my time working here.” Dan said, leaving out the most important point. If Dan had never taken his mother’s suggestion to work down at the plant shop, Dan would never had met Phil. Meeting Phil felt like a thrill, a joy he was running towards instead of running from.

As Bec walked back to time out of her shift, Dan busied himself with selecting this weeks’ Spotify playlist. It was the most momentous and the most enjoyable part of his day, selecting music he liked to listen to.

 

By the time Phil Lester had walked into the storefront at his expected time at the end of Dan’s shift, the song had shuffled to a disturbingly well timed [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg) appropriate for the occasion. The bass was thundering yet quiet all the same.

Phil always had the same bemused look on his face which made him seem as if he was solving a puzzle in his mind constantly. Today, there was a softening to the way Phil looked at Dan. It was as if they were meeting for the first time again, with thousands of questions and a world full of answers.

“There’s been this question I’ve been thinking of all morning.” Phil admitted to Dan, hand landing firmly on the counter.

Dan raised his eyebrows in query, as Phil pulled up the chair he sat on the very first day. “Did you leave as soon as I fell asleep?”

Dan chuckled, as his smiled filled him with light. “I left hours later. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.” He raised his eyebrows as Phil blushed. “You’re radiant, even in slumber.”

Phil laughed, as he felt the ripples of joy ebb off him. When their exuberant conversation sobered, Phil looked at Dan. “Do you want to know why I don’t mind you being a divorce lawyer?”

Dan sighed. “Oh my God, Phil. I had been worrying about telling you that since the day I met you.”

Phil’s eyes widened as he blinked quickly. “You spend your days listening to the ways a love can end. Which means you know exactly what _not_ to do in order for a love to go rotten.”

Dan could feel his heart beating out of his chest. “I never thought of it like that. I always thought of it as I know all the ways that love is a weakness, so I think love is a weakness as well.”

“Do you think love is a weakness?” Phil asked, resting his chin on the palm of his hand.

“Not anymore.” Dan replied, trying to hide his growing smile. “Not since I met you.”

Phil giggled with his tongue sticking out, as Dan began to close up by locking up various areas and such. “Do you want to hang out at my place tonight?” Phil hollered to Dan from the other side of the room.

Phil could hear Dan’s footsteps echo as they neared him. “What are we going to do? Watch Netflix until you fall asleep again?” Dan joked slyly.

 

“You didn’t want to go for a proper date, so I guess I’ll bring the proper date to you.” Phil said sneakily, looking at Dan with something swirling in his irises.

Dan shook his head and muttered something sarcastically, as Phil chuckled and dragged him off to his car, which he drove all the way back to the apartment of memories.

When Dan stepped inside, it was the first time he was truly brought to tears. Dan had seen the fairy lights turned off before, but when they were turned on with the balcony open to showcase the sunset, Phil’s flat felt like a different universe. Somewhere, there was a soft song playing in the background.

“I did a quick FaceBook search and you’re quite the music enthusiast.” Phil explained, as Dan took in the makeshift dance floor that stood in front of them, made possible by pushing loads of his furniture to the sides.

Phil held his hand open to Dan for the taking. He led, never allowing Dan to fall. A hush falls over the room. Is this something that happened to people like Dan? People who didn’t even know what love really was. Phil was all of the creativity and kindness in a person. Phil pulls Dan closer, and Dan couldn’t even say anything. As they maintained eye contact, it was as if they were telepathically communicating.

They weren’t really dancing, but they swayed in sync. Dan chuckled at the absurdity at such a thing. They were tall and lanky, not the demographic for cheesy teen movies. They were adults with day jobs, and yet there was always time for feelings they had never felt before.

 

“This moment lasts only minutes but I promise you, we’re timeless.” Phil whispered, as the music enveloped them once more.


	9. Epiphany/Melancholy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the place between the friendzone and dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a hot minute since I posted last, and this chapter is so short. I'm so sorry aaaaah
> 
> Note: Since Dan's apathy and indifference is different than the average human's thought process, I am writing Dan with traits from personality disorders in mind, especially from the schizoid personality disorder. (SzPD) However, the disorder is relatively understudied by academics and professionals alike, I will not be writing this disorder into his character. In addition, I am not a professional and would not want to spread false/romanticised information about SzPD.

Dan chuckled into Phil’s shoulder as they continued to do some semblance of slow dancing around Phil’s apartment. The stars had seemed to align on this fragrant, beautiful night. It was nights like these that made Dan feel as if anything was possible. In the heat of summer, life was teeming with possibility. “You’re incredibly cheesy, did you know that?” Dan said, as they swayed to the rhythm of the beat. He was painfully aware of his heartbeat, making him feel more alive than ever before.

Dan was never one to get drunk, but he ought to believe that this was how getting drunk felt like. It felt like stars and flying and travelling to another dimension. “You could have made a good poet in another lifetime. If you never became an artist you could have been a writer.” Dan said, with a casual shrug.

Phil’s face soured and then he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. The sun was setting in the background which did no good to quell the hopeless romantic inside of him. “Oh, what can I say?” Phil mused with a lingering tease. “Romance is my soft spot.”

 

Dan furrowed his brow for a moment, not being able to process Phil’s words. He had the same lingering smile that refused to disappear. “You’re all soft edges, Phil.” Dan whispered, taking Phil’s hand in his own and lacing his fingers into Phil’s. “You’re all soft edges and light. That’s why we’re good together. That’s why we were made for each other. Carved from the same stars at the beginning of the universe or something.” Dan said, only half joking. The theatrical romantical side of him had been winning in later days, but his tone fell flat at times as well.

Phil blushed, as the cool night air drafted in and he shut the balcony door closed. They sat on the couch, with a sea of mismatched furniture in front of them. “I can’t believe I only have a week left before I leave.” Dan mused, sighing tiredly.

Phil nodded knowingly and slowly took Dan’s hand in his own. “We’ll keep in touch.” Phil said quietly, hopefully. “You’re only two hours away.”

Dan clucked his tongue. “It’ll be different. We’ll drift apart.” He replied, reverting back to the stone cold monotone he used in the first instance of meeting Phil. 

Phil leaned onto Dan’s shoulder, staring up at his brown eyes. “We won’t. I’ll visit you all the time.”

Dan shook his head. “We both agreed to not let love get in the middle of our careers.” He acquiesced. “But I’d do the same for you.”

Phil chuckled, as they both stared up at the ceiling. “Let’s just focus on right now, okay? Tomorrow belongs to us, to the ones willing to try.”

Dan rolled his eyes and scoffed. “That’s so cheesy.” He said, giving Phil a slight shove. He felt awkward doing it, as they were intertwined in some dating limbo when they accepted that they were more than friends, but haven’t kissed yet.

 

Dan tried thinking about that, about kissing Phil. He imagined it happening in a totally unassuming and unsuspecting way. It would be the polar opposite of the way people kissed in movies, when the heavens would part and the world would make way for these two people who found each other by some unnatural twist of fate. All of a sudden, Dan felt an inescapable feeling. He was sitting opposite Phil, they were just two people doing nothing.

He was scared, he was terrified. Dan was scared he was using this fake-happy, using  _ Phil _ as means to run away from himself and his unnamable fear. All of the beautiful fluid vanilla twilight Dan had been feeling had drained from his soul. He could feel the white noise leaching at his skin. It was too good to be true, after all. No person so good could balance a robotic monster. Dan had shaped and moulded himself into an emotionless monster that was far from lovable. He was terrified that the white noise would overtake him, and the only way he knew how to silence the white noise was in the pleasure of Phil’s company.

That was the dichotomy; confusion between human emotion and human dependency.

 

Where Dan used to look at Phil with light, love, and memories, he just saw confusion. Dan’s mind seemed to get tangled together. He didn’t understand what he was facing, Dan didn’t know what love felt like. He knew he was on the way to the answers of his fate, but he didn’t know if he was ready for the truth of reality. The question was,  _ did Dan really like Phil?  _

He suddenly saw the last fifteen days of his life in a different light. Dan saw his interactions from an out of body experience, and he knew he had misled Phil. Dan had been projecting his need of love and care onto Phil. He knew it was selfish and unfair, to mislead Phil and make him mistake kindness for flirtation. When Dan saw himself kissing someone, he saw it on a night like this, but not with a person too good to be true.

Phil’s body heat was radiating towards Dan, but his own melancholy musings had chilled him to the bone, leaving Dan lonelier than ever.

Dan moved away and closed his eyes. He took deep breaths and let the white noise fill his ears. He let himself feel the ice in his veins and embraced the painful snapping of his heart strings. He let himself move away. He couldn’t hurt Phil. He couldn’t hurt Phil. He felt like a prisoner, fated to some predetermined destiny. All at once and at no time at all, Dan felt like his life wasn’t his.

Dan let himself move away from the couch and let himself feel the special kind of sadness at a lost opportunity. He felt his lips mumble a teasing joke and polite goodbye as he turned the door handle and watched Phil’s eyes dilate and then expand. He was putting all his energy into his bodily functions that Dan tried not to think of what his soul was saying.

For all Dan knew, his soul could be screaming Phil’s name.

He felt the soles of his shoes walk down the beaten stairway. He watched as the cool night air lick at his skin. The feeling of dread follows him on the walk home. Dan knew at this moment that he was leaving Phil’s home for the last time. The feeling ebbs his white noise and replaces it momentarily with guilt. Dan takes a deep breath and carries on home. Dan felt helpless as life passed him by.

* * *

The next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, Dan had enjoyed his last few days of his routine. Tomorrow was Friday, and Phil hadn’t gone down to the plant shop since Dan had walked out on Phil.

If Dan crawled under the covers and went digging under some deep recesses of his mind was only when he could be truly honest with himself. And if Dan was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure what happened that night. Everything was confusing, and it felt muddled in his mind. Dan liked to think with sharp clarity, and when he thought of Phil his mind turned into an unsatisfied mess of blurred lines. He wanted to connect with Phil, but a bigger part of him wanted to isolate himself and do something alone.

Above all, Dan felt sad. For the next three days as he wiped windows and buried himself in the work, he had lots of time for his thoughts to brew. Dan had come to the personal conclusion that he never really liked Phil. He wanted to like Phil, because Phil was perfect and likeable in every single way. If the timing was right and the stars would align, they would happen naturally. Dan had forced himself to fall in love with Phil and feel the entirety of the emotional spectrum within a week. He was scared that the city would drain him all over again when it was hardly the city that drained him at all. He was putting himself in harm’s way, and Dan didn’t know what that meant for sure.

The only conclusion Dan could draw is that his self destructive tendencies were getting the better of him. He felt muted and he felt in grayscale colours, but every now and then a fleeting thought of Phil made his heart swell and made him think in crisp clarity.

As he watered the plants day in and day out, time just made Phil Lester more complex than he need be.

 

The days passed him by in a blur, and by the time he had only three days left before returning to rainy London was when he saw a tall silhouette peek through from behind a leafy plant only mere centimeters taller than Phil himself.

“Been a while.” Dan muttered in his deadpan tone. It was his final workday, and he had just received his last paycheck. His face was buried in between two glossy pages of a pretentious and overpriced art magazine that he had bought on a whim the other day.

He could see Phil shrug from the corner of his eye. “Can we talk?” 

Dan slammed down the magazine unnecessarily hard onto the table and looked at a fidgety Phil with a raised eyebrow. Dan was about to roll his eyes and return to reading his magazine, but something about their familiar interaction that stopped him short.

They were back to their old ways; a man in his late twenties who was already tired and sarcastic and fulfilled the quarter life crisis. A man, clutching onto his last fringes of childhood and reawakening, already into his early thirties. They were the same people they were three weeks ago, but different all the same.

Dan was seeing the inevitable happen in front of his very eyes, wherein two people with an ocean of history between them eventually lose sight of the shore.

They were strangers, mysteries, vagabonds, wanderers. They were shaped from the same stardust but put into different souls. At that moment, Dan felt scrubbed clean.

 

Dan stood up and decided to toss his carefully curated routine out the window. He stood up and left his post early, trailing behind the heels of Phil Lester.

Phil had been walking incredibly fast, at a rate so quick that Dan decided it was embarrassing to admit his athletic shortcomings. Phil hadn’t uttered a word since they left the plant shop and Dan was growing rather impatient.

They had been walking for ten minutes before Phil stopped in a clearing. It was the kind of place Dan expected to be a National Heritage Site in any other city. Phil stopped abruptly and sized Dan up for many ardorous seconds. Dan crossed his hands across his chest and huffed. “Well?” Dan asked tempestuously. “We’re here now, so talk.”

 

Phil’s eyebrows knotted for a brief moment as his face contorted in an indiscernible look, staring at Dan with mild scrutiny. He took a long exhale and rubbed at his temples. “Are you just leading me on?” 

Dan blinked in confusion for a few seconds as he processed Phil’s question. He could feel the truth on the tip of his tongue, just begging to spill out. “I don’t know.”

Instead of Phil’s face morphing from exasperation to anger, it changed to a sympathetic look of understanding. He looped around the clearing as they made their way back. “What’s going on, Dan?” Phil asked softly.

Dan sighed. “I don’t know. I really like you, but I don’t want to hurt you. I’m still figuring out who I am.”

Phil looked at Dan as he leaned into him. “You won’t hurt me, but you will hurt yourself if you keep pushing yourself like this.”

 

He leaned into Dan giving him a hug, the gesture filled with meaning and promise and hope.


	10. The Agenda of Human Existence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things come in threes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went on vacation and wrote this overlooking a private lake. Enjoy the chilled out vibes while it lasts, friends. This chapter was one of my favourites to write.

The abrupt embrace initiated by Phil left Dan in a state of subtle shock. He wasn’t used to bouts of intimacy, and yet at times he craved it desperately. He could feel the tightly spinning coil that was eternally wrapping around his heart release slowly. Dan was perpetually in a state of confusion, and it left him in all sorts of disarray. Dan gulped, and they carried on walking.

 

More or less five minutes into their walk, his thoughts had managed to unscramble themselves and Dan was able to sort out the clear line of events that led him to this moment. He realised that what he found was so sacred and so rare, that he needed to treat it with respect. Dan found himself in a relationship with Phil, someone that cared about him unconditionally with no strings attached. In this revelation Dan had decided that whether their relationship was platonic, romantic, or otherwise didn’t matter to him. He was grateful for being in the good graces of Phil’s company alone. 

 

He exhaled, and decided on how he felt. Dan didn’t want to feel like his old self, because his old self was cynical and cunning and yet totally indifferent. In these nineteen days Dan had managed to draw the line between his old self and his new self, but the line was getting blurred. He had once thought that his new self would be this extroverted, incendiary being that went out for drinks and kissed people he knew for less than a month. He thought that being happy meant going outside and living and laughing and fulfilling everything in the agenda of human existence.

 

Dan thought that the living life to the fullest and true, unconditional happiness meant everything he was doing wrong.

 

  1. Dan had believed that the first rule to being a free spirited vagabond was being the stereotypical rebellious archetype.



 

Possibly this was what he was doing wrong all along. Dan didn’t know when he decided on his internal rulebook of Human Fulfilment, but he had grown up on a spoon fed diet of teenagers on television presented as kids who talked back to their parents. The ones presented as ‘cool’ were the ones who were obscenely rude and had a sour attitude towards everyone else. He knew he wasn’t the only one who saw these kids on television, as he strived to emulate the rebellious alternative kids at his secondary school, too. Dan was part of the generation that showed the whole spectrum of personalities in the media, they were the offspring of the rebellious few. Dan was in the generation that grew up on participation trophies and then were shoved into the world with no preparation. He was part of the harsh scrutiny from his elderlies for not growing up without hardship. He was part of the group of children that began their adult lives in a world with an economy collapsing and a society who believed a person’s only goal was to work like a dog until late retirement. They were thrusted into a world of war and mass crisis, and yet everyone overlooked their cries becausesocial mediawas the root of all evil. Dan was part of the generation that read science fiction novels about governments turning on their people, and watched their world become science fiction alone. He was desensitised to the cries of the world, from the girls who starved in the bellies of teen mothers to the man just five years older than him in the office he worked at who needed antidepressants to survive. 

 

Society had made his upbringing hard, and it was only now that he could only dream to soften.

 

  1. Everybody had the same right to be loved.



 

Dan had spent the whole of his life starved of some sadistic right he had made up in his mind. Just thinking about his rule book now made him feel sick to his bones and nausea brewing in his stomach. This right, this undeniable right had made Dan believe that love was this all encompassing thing. This was where he had gone astray, when Dan believed that love would empower and win in the end. He had believed this up until he was a preteen that love was all that the world needed in order for it to be fully functioning. And maybe, it kept Dan’s belief that his father would come back alive. When his father never returned and the only paternal love he had was ripped from his arms, his distorted and pure belief in love and that life has a hopeful undertone was corrupted. He never knew what it was like to have the first love that almost every child had. Where a father was supposed to love him instead the void was filled through legal jargon and divorce terms that Dan carried throughout his precocious adolescence and throughout his adulthood. He had believed for the better half of his life that humans were put on this earth to love, and to love they shall. He had realised now how fatally flawed such a notion was. His heart had soured and gone rotten over the years of his loveless heart hardening training. As the days of summer passed Dan by, he realised that maybe, possibly,surely,humans were put on this earth to spread love and soft peace but perhaps not everyone had the same right to be loved. Everyone deserved to be treated with the true and pure kindness that Phil seemed to carry with him all days of his life, but the kind of unrelenting romantic love wasn’t  made available for everyone. Everyone was made different, crafted from different stars and shaped into different souls. 

Dan wasn’t sure if every single person, every mass murderer and every genocidal dictator and every social worker and medical assistant had the same rights to love. Dan didn’t know at the end of the day the answer to such a big and empty and infinitely vast question, but he knew Phil. He knew that Phil Lester had the kind of love and soft peace that humans were first created with. Somewhere along the Lester bloodline the genetic kindness, if such a thing were hereditary, had been passed on from the ancestors of old and the artists of new. 

 

  1. A man was put on this earth for a woman; a woman was put on this earth for a man.



 

This kind of rule on the human agenda was the kind of unspoken belief that had been passed down towards conservatives and mothers alike. He had never dared to doubt such an infinitely taunting question, never until now. He had never believed that these two things were had in hand. Dan had always faith in the way things were, even if it put him on the wrong side of history. Whilst he had always believed that love meant a pretty girl and two children and wedded in sacred matrimony, he was never prejudiced nor held any animosity. He was never against the legal cases he was given between two spurned same-sex lovers, but he had never found himself staring into the abyssal void of their shoes. Dan had never had to go into his metaphorical filing cabinet of his mind and rifle towards the cases where two men had grown out of love. He had done this last night not out of hatred or to empower the prejudicial side of him, but to make sense of something he didn’t understand before. How could he be prejudiced against love, when he spent his youth getting called scornful homophobic slurs just for styling his hair a certain way? 

This was a kind of awakening, a kind of rebirth that Dan had yet to experience before this. Before he had met Phil he had never questioned these kinds of things about his very existence, some things about the very fabric of upbringing. Dan knew that there were people like those in existence, people who loved so carelessly and with the freedom and reckless abandon of a thousand army men. He saw the rumble of love against all odds even at the end of the day, but now he had met Phil. While everyone had loved with such a persistent passion that rumbled and inflamed every meaning and every reason for their existence, Phil was a flash flood of love. He was a forest fire in July, with enough passion to light up a thousand forests. Phil had entered Dan’s life without question, so abruptly and so vividly that Dan’s ideas on the Agenda of Human existence were flipped around, leaving him lightweight, careless and yet ultimately precautious.

 

* * *

Dan mulled over these loosely intertwined rules over and over again until he had beaten the idea of existence and the human agenda to a bloody pulp. And when it was all over, he found himself reliant on human company above all other. He looked over at Phil, perhaps his only friend in the world, and he knew that both of them wanted something more. Love was a tempestuous tango, pushing and pulling and ending in injury when not handled properly. Phil was a flash flood of cool, blue, lake water and Dan was a matchstick in a forest fire. They were dancing and daring and saying things without actually speaking any words. 

 

“So where does this leave us?” Dan choked out, eyes slightly glassy with a disdainfully snide smirk playing on his lips against his whims. He wanted Phil to press forward, to keep going and keep making him wonder about all the things he could think of. Phil could be the world to Dan, if they were just a bit younger and just a little bit more naive. If they were just a little bit young and innocent they could have had the world and more already in each others’ arms by sundown. 

 

“It leaves us ahead of schedule.” Phil teased, tossing his head flippantly over his shoulder. “Come on, this is what I wanted to show you.” 

 

The two of them walked up a steep hill which made Dan slightly winded and out of breath, but ultimately the view in front of him made it all worth it.

 

Their town was a small one, with small ponds and creeks filled with crayfish skittering around in the summertime heat. He knew of the inland ponds and of the small pockets of freshwater within the main town strip, but never would he have believed that there was a vast, secluded lake just minutes away. The lake was so grand and so vast that it couldn’t be taken in with a single glance, and yet the trees seemed to stretch into the horizon, creating a wall of foliage and entrapping the private lake with its’ fauna. From here, all the rules of the world, all agendas and all plans made in the heat of the city moment felt useless and meaningless. Dan had left the city not to stay in a smaller scale rural village, but to swim with the fishes in the clear water that made sunlight sparkle beneath the surface. The trees were so far and so blended seamlessly into each other that it felt as if Dan was living in a watercolour world.

 

“Do you know how to swim?” Phil asked, dropping down his suspiciously large duffel bag of items whilst Dan caught up to Phil and stood beside him in awe.

 

Dan took a deep breath of the clear forest air. “I swim like a fish. You?”

 

All Dan needed was for Phil’s nod of assent that he was able bodied and knew how to swim. Just because they were inching away from the middle place and into something more akin to skinny love, it didn’t make Dan’s boyish whims diminish any less. He did what any Brit in his late twenties, robbed of his childhood, would do — he pushed Phil into the lake.

While Phil might see it as a cruel joke, Dan saw it as a mercy. The early afternoon sun had returned with a vengeance and was making beads of sweat roll down Dan’s temples. When Phil finally resurfaced and washed up on the small wooden dock, he shook his head mischievously. His hair was wet and the black dye seemed to be melting off of him. His skin was slick with lake water and the sunlight glistened and sparkled on his skin. It made Phil look positively radiant.“You’re no fun, Attorney Howell.” Phil teased, smirking from ear to ear as he grabbed hold of Dan’s ankle and pulled him into the cool water as well.

 

The first thing Dan registered after feeling the abrupt sensation of shock was the tingling sensation of the cool water flooding every sense he had. The brief second of silence that accompanied after, the feeling of his head being detached from the air and the water sounds totally surrounding him made for the quietest thing since white noise.

 

That was the problem with white noise — it was still noise.

 

Dan had mistaken the city sounds for being too rambunctious and made out white noise to be the closest thing to silence. Away from everything that had ever mattered and away from every agenda, deadline, and sexuality crisis, everything was starting to make sense. In the vast silence in the middle of the crystal clear murky water, there was the time and space to breathe and be totally still.

 

When Dan had come up for water, it was like the chaos greeting the storm. It was peaceful, but peaceful in the way that people used white noise to fall asleep to. Dan would much rather prefer being underwater as opposed to sitting a few metres away from the dock, watching the rolling watercolour trees and the slow moving waves roll around the pond. There was much too many noises in this world for Dan to be totally still. He had spent the last nineteen days panicking and worrying and experiencing total withdrawal symptoms from not being connected to WiFi, but whenever he was with Phil he didn’t care. Phil was this part of Dan’s life that was detached from all of the troubles of the world, a part of his subconscious that would rather be called Dan instead of Daniel. In this moment it wasn’t just Phil that made Dan forget about the Internet connectivity or his workload, but it was the atmosphere around him that made him truly, tempestuously, terrifyingly, at ease.

 

Dan craned his neck to take in the whole of the lake and there was still not enough eyesight to capture the majesty of the lake. He had wished desperately for his phone, but he knew that the phone would hardly do it justice.

 

“Something wrong?” Phil asked, swimming up close to Dan.  

 

Dan shook his head insistently. “Not at all. Phil, it’s beautiful.”

 

Phil smirked knowingly at Dan. “It’s a pretty crappy lake, huh?”

 

After the abrupt declaration that made Dan stop short, he took a second look at the lake. By all means it was beautiful, but the trees were so dense and dark that it cast foul shadows on the lake. The bottom of the lake was filled with slippery logs and slimy sea plants. The odour of the lake was from pleasant with its fishy fragrance coming from the black spotted, sewage green sea bass with beady red eyes. It was a lake for sure, but he had seen better. The only reason he had loved the lake so much was because Phil took him there, and because it was totally, truly, completely, quiet.

 

He had craved the quiet so much, and yet he never even knew he wanted to leave until he did. Before leaving the tired old city of London he would rather be damned than leave his work desk. Now, he would rather be damned before he came back. In the days he spent celebrating a summertime for adults, Dan found out so many things about himself that he never would have. Dan realised he would rather listen to an artist from his youth, even if it meant reliving old memories that would rather stay repressed. Dan was a romantic at heart, and just like everyone he begged to be loved. Dan learned that his deadpan, flat tone was just a ruse, and it made for a Daniel with a sarcastic bite, but he would rather have his low and gravelly voice any other time of the day.

 

Despite perhaps catching feelings where he never had expected, despite realising that love was empowering, despite realising that he would never truly know what led to a divorce, Dan learned that he loved being a lawyer. By God, did Daniel love what he did. Dan loved feeling like he had a voice, that he could help someone with the responsibility of a choice. He saw the good and the sour parts of loving, and it just made his own romantic endeavours that much special.

 

Later in the day, Dan and Phil floated carelessly along the lakeshore, head facing the endless sky. “I’m leaving in three days.” Dan muttered. He had meant to address it to Phil, but it was more of a self-reminder than anything. 

 

The cool water made his fingers feel cold and lightweight. “I know.” Phil said. He sounded sad when he said it, even if Dan had broken his heart too many times to count. The heart was such a fragile thing, and he played with it like a baseball. “I’ll drive you. It’s a two hour car or train ride. Might as well save you the twenty pounds.” Phil replied, closing his eyes surreptitiously. 

 

Dan went to protest, but he couldn’t find the means in his heart to say no. If he rode on the train all it would leave him with was a tired soul and a mind going over all the things he wish he did with Phil. There was never enough hours in a day to find the courage for Dan, but maybe spending a car ride or two would be good for him. He wasn’t ready to let go of Phil, not just yet. Instead, he flattened his lips into a thin line, closed his eyes, and nodded his head slowly. He slowly nodded and agreed, wanting to stay inside this moment forever and ever and all the way down.

 

“I don’t want to leave yet.” Dan whispered.

 

Phil chuckled, sticking his tongue out with a smile. “When I first met you, you were counting down the days before you could go back to work. You were craving that the synthetically lit, cubicle desk and craving escape from the fresh air and the radiant morning sun.” Phil teased.

 

Dan laughed, boisterously, truly, madly, deeply. He laughed and laughed not because he was forcing it out, but because on the last days of rare silence laughter flowed out of him like water running out of a tap. He was truly and incredibly happy. Dan didn’t know if he was in love or not, but all he knew was that he was happy. Now that he was happy, that was all that he needed.


	11. Pandora's Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening Pandora's Box is much like having dinner with parents, or reading this story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I hope you enjoy this chapter and sorry if its a bit choppy etc as I wrote this on a plane :)

 On the twentieth day, on the third to the last day before the best impromptu vacation he had ever took came to an end, Daniel Howell started his day with his heart pounding in his chest. 

 

He still had two days of vacation, but there was a kind of sadness that filled his lungs. This kind of sadness was implacably indescribable. The looming feeling of going back to normalcy was a strange feeling to place, mostly because the act of leaving had yet to happen. He would be leaving tomorrow in Phil’s car, driving up to London and back to his scruffy grey flat in the middle of the city. 

He didn’t really have a plan for the day, with his resignation from the plant shop already in full effect. Dan decided that he would walk to the eternally quiet cafe that played jazzy tunes any time of the day. By walking to the cafe, he had time to think about all of the things that he had done in the last month or so. A month ago, Dan was miserable and he didn’t know it. Dan lived and breathed the work, thinking that it was the only way to survive. A month later, life felt possible again. When he went back to London, Dan wanted to go to that new Japanese place that his coworkers were raving about. He wanted to go to the London eye for the first time in his life. Dan wanted to go with his only cousin in London and visit Buckingham palace. He wanted the whole tourist experience, he wanted to decorate his flat. Dan wanted to try gardening. He wanted to write a book. Dan wanted to live.

 

At the cafe he ordered a heavily buttered croissant and a steaming coffee. He read the daily newspaper and felt like an old man in a young man’s body. He felt quiet and still and not trapped by the white noise in his mind as he usually did. He had found a way to live without feeling like every day was a fight for survival and self preservation.

Later in the morning, Dan decided to take a walk to the plant shop. There was no souvenir he had to remember this month by, and Dan knew precisely that buying a plant from the plant shop he had worked at would make it unforgettable. When Dan walked inside the small plant shop, he knew Rebecca was on duty though she was in the back doing paperwork. His feet instantly went to the countertop, remembering the first time Phil had walked in here.

* * *

_The door creaked sullenly as Dan was preoccupying himself whilst he dug a sharp groove into the corner of the countertop with his house key. His eyes flicked up to the door chimes and looked to see a tall, lanky figure standing against the natural sunlight. He huffed quietly, he had seen this type before. The foolish, insolent lovesick boy that got lost on his way to the florists’ boutique._

* * *

 His hands wandered around the groove that had been smoothed out by now. A smile spread warmly at the fond memory. How foolish Dan looked now, thinking Phil was an insolent lovesick boy when Dan ended up being the insolent lovesick boy.  

* * *

  _He looked up at the boy — there was something off with him. It was as if the boy was dwindling, taking his time. He was wearing black skinny jeans and a collared top, carrying around a brown leather messenger bag. It was only for a brief moment did Dan feel something pull at him, something primal and strange._

_He blinked quickly when the feeling washed over him, remembering how he was probably just shopping for his girlfriend._

* * *

 Dan exhaled a snort through his nose, thinking about just how off his first impression of was Phil. He thinks about that pull he felt deep inside, that same pull Dan felt continually every single time he saw Phil. He felt that beautiful, incredible, wonderful pull just now thinking of Phil. Phil made Dan’s heart fill with something fluid and lush, making him feel lightweight and incendiary.

* * *

_"I’m not looking for the florists’.” He replied, blush deepening slightly as he ran a hand through his short hair. “Actually, I was wondering where I could find the Japanese succulent imports.” He said, flashing Dan a shy grin._

_Dan tried to contain himself from rolling his eyes. “To your left.” He replied, nodding in the direction of a small shelf of plants.”_

* * *

 Dan felt his feet moving towards the left side of the store, where there was a small shelf of Japanese plants. He saw the same exact one, the same one that Phil brought and painted. He brought it up to the counter and rung the bell, waiting for Rebecca to come to the front. Rebecca came to the front, her hair a tangled knot of red. “When are you leaving?” She asked, while Dan handed over his spare change. 

“Already gone.” Dan replied, flashing Rebecca a sly smile. “See you soon, Bec.”

As Dan collected his plant and walked out, he realised that this was the last time he would be walking out of the plant shop. The next time he would walk in, if ever, it would be visiting the plant shop because of the memories that they made. They made some beautiful memories, some beautiful times of unforgettable nights. He would enter the plant shop with the eternal memory of that being the place where he first met Phil. With the two things that he planned to do completely out of the way, Dan decided to wander over to the lake he was at with Phil yesterday. He made his way from where he went yesterday, retracing his steps with pertinence.

 

Dan wanted to go with Phil, but he would be in a car with him for two hours tomorrow. While Dan loved being with Phil, he also knew his boundaries.

Dan went to the lake and sat at the dock, letting the warm sun beat down on his face while the cool breeze whipped his curly hair. Here, he was at peace. Dan felt so madly and so truly at peace, that it felt like a crime to leave the lake. It was the kind of lake you find when you were just a wandering child, the kind of lake where it becomes your secret hideaway, where you steal your first kiss. In the midday sun the water was so clear that he could see the fishes swim with no care in the world. Dan took a nap underneath a pine tree, waking up in the late afternoon. Yesterday, Dan had made plans with Phil to have dinner with Dan’s mother, since their only encounter were far and few, incredibly awkward as well. 

He took one last glance at the rolling waves of the lake, and Dan walked all the way back to main street where Phil’s short but attractive apartment lay. Dinner was supposed to be a kind of grandeur, wherein Dan’s mother would show off her culinary skills. Dan hadn’t told his quite conservative mother that he had romantic feelings for a boy, but she had an inkling of the darkling feelings brewing in his heart.

Dan knocked on the door of Phil’s apartment, always pleasantly surprised when Phil answers the door, making his heart fill with the same lush and beautiful feeling. It spread everywhere in his body, making him feel slightly sweet and slightly unsure of his feelings. Dan was playing a dangerous game, and he didn’t know what he was doing. He hated not being in control and not knowing what to do, but if he just took a deep breath and let go, he could feel himself becoming more sure in what he wanted. All he wanted was for Phil to continue staying a figure in his life, and if he took a deep breath he didn’t need to worry about anything else. Dan didn’t even care for whether Phil liked Dan back or not. Dan liked Phil, and that was all.

The door creaked open to show a Phil Lester dressed to the nines. He wasn’t clad in a suit and tie, but he did have a crisply pressed cotton blend button down shirt with a pair of dress pants in replacement for the jeans. His hair was slicked back with some water gel holding it in place, making Phil’s quizzical and expressive eyes pop even more against the contrast of his creamy white skin. “You look great.” Dan said genuinely, every remnant of his past monotone Alto self disintegrated

Phil bit his lip and smiled. “You always look good too, Dan. But honestly? You look like a mess. A beautiful mess, but still a mess.”

Dan chuckled and the pursed his lips. The problem with their complicated relationship was that the line between friendly banter and flirtation was impossibly blurred. Where could one draw the line from friendly to flirtation?

 “Shall we?” Dan asked, holding out his arm jokingly. Phil took his hand in stride, and Dan felt his heart swell just a little bit more.

 “We shall.” Phil said with a giggle. 

 

They made their way to Phil’s car and immediately found a conversation to discuss. There were no things that were too off-limits, or no things too controversial that could be discussed between the two of them. Despite only knowing each other for a month, truly Dan had never connected with someone so real and so true compared to Phil.

When they arrived at Dan’s mother’s door just a few short minutes later, Dan stood hesitantly before knocking on the door. Phil rocked on the heels of his toes slightly impatiently. “Something wrong?” Phil asked, tilting his head slightly.

 Dan shook his head rapidly and then he took a deep breath. “If my mum asks anything too invasive or too weird, you aren’t obligated to answer.” Dan told Phil, in the strangely monotone and reserved voice he used when talking with others. 

 Phil felt perplexed at the turn of his demeanour, but he didn’t pry. Instead, Phil just agreed and nodded. “Okay. Thanks for telling me Dan.” He replied with a tight lipped smile. 

 Dan decided to bring in the storm, he knocked on his childhood home’s wooden door, opening Pandora’s Box. 

Dan Howell’s mother was always bright and babbling. There was never a dull spot or an awkward moment with her, because she always filled it with lively albeit meaningless chatter. “You must be Phil!” She exclaimed as soon as she answered the door, enveloping Phil in a large and warm hug. “I’ve heard so much about you!” She replied, ushering him and Dan inside.

As the duo entered the home, Dan looked at his mother.

 

Yesterday at one of their last breakfasts together, Dan was gorging on french toast and English tea. His mother was through the second round of maple syrupy toast and Dan still had the taste of cream and sugar as an aftertaste whilst Dan popped the question. “Hey, can Phil come over for dinner tomorrow.?” Dan asked, as informally yet personally as possible.  

Such a request stopped Dan’s mother in the middle of her discussion of a recent article she read about Internet celebrities. “Phil? The one you dragged to our family gathering?”

Through gritted teeth Dan wanted to insinuate that at this point Phil was family, because anyone who would protect and understand him so fiercely was family in his books. “Yes.”

“What is with you and Phil?” His mother asked, with ice and venom and yet with an underlying tone of concern that resonated in her voice.

Dan looked at his mother insistently, just before he went out for one of his last shifts at the plant shop. “Phil is my friend.” Dan insinuated once more. “And he’s coming to dinner tomorrow.” He said, standing up.

He had never felt such white hot fury such as what he felt now. He had never felt anything other than passive aggressive feeling and tempestuous bliss. It was a strange, terrifying feeling. He had never felt such anger that bled out of compassion. Dan couldn’t feel anything other than agitation, because how could anyone look at Phil and have any negative connotation at all? How could anyone get to know Phil and still dislike him? In Dan’s eyes, Phil was beauty and grace and something genuine and pure he had never felt before. He felt care and compassion and gross reckless, wild, abandon for any of society’s standards set for him thus far.

 

A day later in present times, Dan had sat across from Phil at the four-seater dinner table. His mother sat beside him, and for the first time in his life Dan saw the fiercely protective side of his mother.

They gorged on pasta and potato and any other starch laden meals. They ate soups and salads and his mother tried to stay the line of inquisitive without being interrogative. “So Phil, what do you do for a living?” She asked between two bites of fettuccini. 

Dan motioned to open his mouth and answer for Phil, but then he stopped himself and saw the fiercely protective side of him he got from his mother. They were both the same in that way, both fiercely protective and too witty for their own good. 

 He knew what his mother’s ulterior motives were, however. Dan knew she thought he would lose everything just by taking Phil’s hand. Maybe if they just got to know each other, all of this insurgency brewing in Dan’s heart would go away. All he needed was reassurance and answers, but yet he had no answers of his own.

Phil’s smile was charming and well practised, unlike the genuine ones where he would stick out his tongue instinctively. It had turned out that Dan wasn’t the only one who knew how to act. “I’m an artist. I make art and murals and advertisements for brands and production companies.”

Dan could see the gears turning in his mother’s mind as she motioned to speak. “Well, did you know that Daniel was a divorce lawyer for a big law firm in London? His full time job wasn’t working at the plant shop, you know.” She said, and it took Dan back to the parent teacher conferences where she used that tone to brag about Dan’s accomplishments. 

Phil’s mouth flattened into a thin line as a triumphant smile bloomed on Dan’s mother’s face. “When—no, where—did you two meet?” She asked. While his mother had a triumphantly glazed smile pasted on her mouth, she had a slight nervous tremor that was underlying. She was either flustered or too inquisitive for her own good.

Dan wanted to answer the question, but he could see Phil already had a well spoken, well thought out answer already decided on. “I always come to the plant shop because the other person that works there, Rebecca, is my good friend. She buys a lot of my works and lets me use the plant shop and the plants inside to use as my workspace so I could paint them. When I came in one day, Dan was sitting there reading pretentious literature and I couldn’t help but befriend him.” Phil replied, and Dan was surprised to see that Phil was looking at Dan instead of at his mother.

Dan broke out into a chuckle. “No way! The Picture of Dorian Gray is not pretentious literature!” He exclaimed.

He had always found Phil so easy to talk to, but there was so much tension building up between them. It was as if they were holding a contest to see who would be the one to hold their breath the longest. “Oscar Wilde. And what an iconic figure he was.” Phil teased. 

 Dan laughed purely, and his mother looked on in confusion. They were talking about something that went over her head, and yet Dan didn’t even know if they were talking of the same things. In that way, the ambiguity called to Dan.

“Anyways.” His mother conceded, looking at the two boys who were locked in each others’ eyes. No matter how much she contested, Dan’s mother knew that Dan and Phil deserved each other and their love for each other. It was just the way fate worked. “Is Rebecca your girlfriend, Phil?” She asked.

Phil chuckled. “Not at all. We’re just really good friends, that’s all.” He said, but instead of looking at Dan’s mother, Phil was looking at Dan directly instead. 

“Rebecca’s a good person.” Dan added, staring his mother down, with a placid smile. “But neither of us are romantically involved with her. She has a boyfriend that lives abroad.” He replied, shrugging and taking another sip of his tomato soup.

They spent the dinner locked in another battle of wits, stopping ever so often just to take bites of the meal in front of them. Dan and Phil tried to be courteous and gratuitous and cunning, but Dan’s mother walked the line of ice queen and ruler of the fire nation.

 

After dinner, Phil shook hands with Dan’s mother, as both Dan and Phil made their way to the exit. On their way out, Dan’s mother raised a gentle hand. “Where are you going, Daniel?”

Dan opened his mouth to croak out an excuse, but everything felt wrong in his mouth. When white noise clouded his vision and his better judgement, Dan used to be so smooth with excuses and with words in general. Luckily, Phil stepped in to intervene. “With me. He left some thing at my place and we’re gonna pick them up.”

Dan could see his mother’s brow furrowing, but before she could ask; “Well, why don’t you just pick up the items and drop them off here?” Phil had already whisked Dan off and they were driving away.

The air was heavy when they were driving, laced with something sour and sweet. Before Dan realised it, he could feel the pressure that he bottled. Dan felt like exhaling from holding his breath so long. He could feel his eyes get watery and his cheeks heat up. Hot, salty, tears were running down his cheeks. There was no one answer as to why the seemingly heartless Dan Howell was crying just now, but at the very root of it all was the vast and unforgiving uncertainty. He was accustomed to hard cold facts and answers at his fingertips, but now he was plagued with simply not knowing the fundamentals of his identity. 

 

Did he love boys? Did he love girls? Did Dan love both boys and girls, or did he simply just love Phil?

Dan knew with true clarity that he loved Phil, it was the only thing he was certain of. He was certain he loved Phil truly, but all the terms and conditions of loving had made him scared and unsure.  

A few minutes after Dan’s tears were running down his cheeks, Phil looked at Dan who was silently stewing with his thoughts. “Dan? Are you okay?” He asked, as they pulled up to a red light. 

Maybe it was the sheer concern born out of kindness that Phil expressed that unlatched the final hinge in Dan’s brain. He was sobbing uncontrollably, and whilst he was embarrassed to show such gross display of public emotion, at this point Dan had grown so comfortable with Phil that it simply did not matter. He looked at Phil and he saw his profile lit up by the street lights and everything he stood for.

These last few twenty days were about throwing everything he had ever known and ever loved out the window, and it felt like it was all building up to this. Dan had been afraid of his feelings, but in the way Phil talked to him made him feel like everything could truly be okay. He was scared to show his emotions, he knew the way people talked. Dan felt something great and terrifying, and something great and pure.

He looked at Phil, and Dan didn’t feel white noise. Dan felt pure, uncensored symphonies flowing through his veins. There were whole orchestras singing in his veins, and he had never felt so alive as he did in this moment. All moments had led up to this, the very end of the beginning.

Phil was the only thing that Dan was truly certain of, and he decided that taking things slow would lead neither of them nowhere and would just lead them back to their cat and mouse tempestuous tango they were trapped in. Phil was taking his time for Dan’s sake, but Dan was tired of waiting.

 

He leaned into Phil, and he knew that the timing was never right, but as long as you were with the right person, the timing was always right. 

 Dan kissed Phil, and it felt like coming home. It felt like the newfound wonder you feel on the first days of spring. It’s the same, underlying, feeling that you feel at the end of a house party when you sit on the steps of the porch taking in the warm sinewy air with a solo cup in hand. It’s the feeling of finding a friend to eat lunches with after a year of being alone.

 

Dan kissed Phil, and it felt like love. It felt like love and compassion and tasted like tomorrow.


	12. Day Twenty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One hell of a filler chapter, one heaven's worth of fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if this chapter is so gross ew i wrote it on a plane with no sleep lol

“What are you doing?” Phil whispered, leaning into Dan’s kiss even more with eager compliance. 

Dan felt the smile grapple at the edges of his mouth. He felt like he was going against some higher plan that the universe had for him, but in his heart Dan knew that this was the plan the universe had for him all along. “The impossible.” Dan whispered back, as they drove somewhere secluded and pulled over. 

“Nothing is impossible.” Phil replied curtly, with a smile of his own blooming.

“Well, kissing you felt impossible.” Dan said, thinking about the total fear he had before taking a blind leap of faith.

Phil laughed, and kissed Dan again. “Let’s go.” He said, driving back to his flat where they were scheduled to just watch movies and ditch the dinner just so they could spend time together. Now after the abrupt kiss, there was much to be left to interpretation. They walked up the stairs now all too familiar to Dan, and there was a new kind of bliss, the lead up to the end.

It was only eight in the evening, the twilight still young and waning. They went back to their regular routine of simply watching movies, but their hands roamed different, newfound places. They were nearer to each other and less unafraid to show affection. There was no dawn, no day, that Dan wanted to greet where he wasn’t with Phil.

 

“Do you know why I kissed you back?” Phil whispered, playing with the coils of curls in Dan’s hair. 

“Why?” Dan croaked out. He used to think that the lack of white noise had made him weaker, but instead the symphonies and the orchestras had made him more in tune with who he is than ever before.

“Because when I look at my hands, I only see the gaps where your hands are meant to be.” Phil whispered, and Dan wanted to scoff and call Phil a hopeless romantic, but it made Dan feel safe. It made him feel like he was cared for in the vast empty universe. With Phil, he felt like he was drenched in honey and twilight. Dan could taste the sky. He felt like a featherweight.

 

“Do you want to know why I kissed you first?” Dan asked, as he felt a nod of assent from Phil. “I kissed you because you remind me of the second day I arrived here. I hadn’t started at the plant shop yet and I had just taken a bath with honey and rosewater and slept in for the first time in my entire life. Anything I did felt like what i was doing was right. You were the quintessential person in all of the movies who made me change my mind about everything. You made me believe that I was a part of something greater, that you were the controlling force of good. None of this had to be true, but just the fact that I believed it was enough. You were enough. You, Phil Lester, are a thousand times enough.”

Phil snuggled in closer to Dan and smiled. “I don’t want to take things slow if it means sacrificing big things in the future. I want to be with you now, no matter what that means.” 

Dan smiled and agreed, and yet smiled as well. “I have to go back to work in two days.” He said with a slight chuckle, marvelling at how the world worked sometimes.

“We’ll make it work. I’ll move to London for you.” Phil exclaimed jokingly.

“One kiss and you’ll drop everything you’ve ever known, everything you’ve ever loved, for me?” Dan asked, looking at Phil with a foolish, lovesick look. And in this moment, Dan thinks that it truly does not get any better than this this. In the quiet Dan felt a choir in his heart. When Dan looked at Phil’s crystal eyes and jet black hair he saw the world in Phil’s eyes and Phil’s fingertips. Everything he had done leading up to now had been a quiet scream of Phil’s name, up until now he had never truly realised who he was. Dan didn’t really know anything, but he saw the grass and it was so green. There was spring and snow and green and love. And when the leaves had turned brown and the pumpkin patches bloomed was when Dan knew his summertime holiday for adults was coming to a close.

 

Phil looked at Dan with a strange sort of fondness and with the light catching just perfectly in his eye. “We both know it was more than just one kiss, Dan. I would have dropped everything for you on the first day I met you. I knew you before I had even met you. My heart was leading me all the way back here.” Phil said, and he was painfully aware that he was nervously rambling.

“You can’t move to London just for me, Phil.” Dan berated, thinking logistically above all other. It was a two hour drive to get to this town, and even though it seemed far, Dan knew they were the lucky ones. His heart couldn’t help but break at the thought of two spurned lovers separated by an ocean and not by just two hours worth. It was unimaginable, the kind of thunder that would brew in his heart if they were separated any further. “We’re two hours apart. We’ll live.” Dan said, and he couldn’t tell whether he was reassuring Phil or reassuring himself of the fact. The separation anxiety was getting to him, and Dan wasn’t sure if he was flying or falling, either.

Phil kissed Dan on the nose. “You think so highly of yourself, Daniel.” He teased, the smile licking at his lips. “I’ve always wanted to move to London because there’s so many more opportunities for artists there. Too bad I’ve already established a career in the south.” He said with a shrug, too well rehearsed to come off as nonchalant.

“We’ll be miles apart.” Dan said, locking eyes with Phil in desperation. He wanted to do something, but what was there to do? 

“We have the Internet. Unlike here, where you forgot your phone.” Phil said jokingly, rolling his eyes.. Dan had told Phil some time ago that he intentionally left his phone on this vacation when Phil asked for Dan’s phone number. They may not see each other often, but in this moment they had each other. It was an overwhelming feeling, thinking that they’ll be so far apart so soon. Dan decided instead to just breathe and take things minute by minute, because Lord knows any other way to cope.

“I’ll drive out next weekend to see you, okay?” Dan asked, and it was a risky question by all precedents. They were never the types to make plans more than a day in advance, and by already making plans with Phil further into the future than they ever dared to make plans for felt like putting a label on something they left labelless.

Dan knew in his heart what he wanted to be to the person lying beside him. Only him and the heavens shared that truth, and Dan was just counting down the days before it ate him alive. On the nights he spent so sorrowfully alone, thinking about the end of all days and how it was creeping up on him too close for comfort, Dan could find it in him to confront the worst parts of his soul.

 

On nights when he had to face the thunder and be brutally honest with himself, his first conversation with his mother haunted him swiftly and without remorse. 

He remembers the flickering lamp and the finicky breeze that swept in and out of the rafters, leaving his bones and his soul utterly chilled. 

Dan remembers his mother, clear as crystal, berating him and telling him twelve times over; “The last thing you need is to have unfinished business when you don’t even know when you’ll come back home.”  

Dan remembers the eternally disdainful way he had rolled his eyes. “What are you talking about?” He asked flatly, when the white noise still washed over him, before he had been filled with symphonies and with orchestras playing in his lungs.

His mother cleared her throat. “ _ Daniel _ . This is the first time in years since you came back home, and now you’re getting a job, making friends, and settling in here as if you moved back?”

He shrugged nonchalantly, if only to hide the swell of discomfort brewing in his lungs. Dan regretted that in the heat of the moment, he had forgotten to point out that his mother was the one who forced him to work the dead-end shop at the plant shop all the way down the street. Instead, he resorted to his wisecracking attitude that perpetually landed him in trouble. “Of course I am. I’m trying to adapt to my circumstances.”

“I’m just saying, this isn’t like you. The Daniel I know wasn’t the one at the party who pasted on a big fake smile even if it was only for a few minutes.” Dan’s mother chastised. “I don’t know who you are, Daniel. It feels like I’m losing you.”

Those last lines, those painful last lines when Dan’s mother admitted something so raw and unfiltered from the heart was what truly pained him. Her voice that had carried such pointless and meaningless babble that Dan had learnt to filter out over time had cracked in pain, because Dan was forcing himself into the extroverted societal standard. 

 

He could feel his own heart snapping, looking back at his painfully ignorant actions. In this moment when he had ran away from his own feelings for so long, in this moment when he was standing in a stranger -now friend- now apparent lover’s apartment made Dan feel like in these last twenty days he had equally found himself and lost himself in both meanings of the term.

He sighed and leaned back into Phil. Dan had just asked Phil if he, Dan Howell, could come back here this time next week and find himself falling into the same routine.

Phil hadn’t answered in a while, and it had troubled Dan. “So can I visit next week?” Dan asked, tilting his head up and facing Phil.

Phil’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “I have a meeting for an art exhibit I’m opening next weekend.” He mumbled, hesitant to admit anything.

Dan’s eyes brightened as he shot up out of his seat. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were opening an art exhibit?” He asked, looking like someone had handed him the sun.

On second thought, with Dan sitting here after a night he never anticipated to happen, with the best happening to him so far, in the last few day Dan had practically been handed the sun itself. If the sun could be bottled into a person of six feet tall and brittle hair, worn over the years of continual dying of his hair black.

Phil leaned into the couch more, as they fell back into their old positions. “I didn’t want to brag. The exhibit is still in three months and I didn’t want to make it look like I was bragging about my career. I really want you to go, though.”

Dan’s eyebrows furrowed. “Of course I’ll attend your exhibit. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Phil closed his eyes and smiled sadly. “Thank you.” He croaked out. “And sorry for being busy next weekend. Maybe you could visit next weekend?” He asked, with a hopeful gleam sparkling in his eye.

Dan brightened for a second, and then his mood was dampened almost immediately. “I have a court hearing with a client in two weeks. What about the week after?” Dan asked.

The two of them had both agreed to meet then, but the rest of the night was filled with an awkward silence. The heavy realisation was dawning on them, the harsh and rigid reality. They were not going to see each other for three weeks, almost the entire duration they had spent together, almost the entire duration of their unspoken love affair.


	13. At summer's end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things must come to an end... eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short update sorry! The title is quite fitting as well, as I'm writing this one week into a new school year and it's already been SO STRESSFUL. I'll try to update once (hopefully twice!) a week, but don't you worry. You're favourite lovesick divorce lawyer isn't done yet.

After a night of love and light and everything all the way down, Dan had picked up his home of hearts and soliloquy of souls. Dan left the spot in Phil’s flat forever known as his own walking back to his house. Dan knew by this time tomorrow he would be a lifetime away from everything he had ever known and ever loved, mourning the death of the summertime for adults as much as he is mourning now. 

Dan fell into his bed and dwindled into a dreamless sleep, yearning for the unknown and aching for the comforts of his home. Dan’s flat all the way back in foggy London was not a home. An ever-stable lawyer person desk work day job was not a home. This, this was a home. Home was supposed to be laden with life and love and home was supposed to be a place impossible to leave. Dan’s heart felt heavy; for he knew that the act of leaving was never easy and rarely pleasing. Dan needed time and space to get over, but he thinks that even after time and space and love and loss itself he may never get over the aching and guttural loss that he felt tremble in his bones right now. 

At the very end of the day however, when Dan thinks of all of the atrocities and all the cruelties of the world, Phil’s goodness makes Dan believe the hopeful undertone of existence. Phil had entered his life and caused a calamity, changing every single truth and everything he had ever known and ever loved. There was a kind of subtle violence that made Dan think of what an all encompassing good the feeling of love truly was. 

He was in such a transitional honeymoon feeling that he could barely fathom what would make someone who you once would perceive as the sun themselves turn to rot before your very eyes. He couldn’t see the necessity of divorce, the reason he was employed.

 

The next morning, back at his childhood home, Dan stands in front of his mother with the kind of sadness embedded into his eyes that was passed down from one offspring to another. Dan always held nothing but love and admiration for his mother, but after the catastrophe of last night Dan saw his mother in a new light.

After the actions that he would never be able to remove from his mind, he felt different and empty. Sad and strange at the forlorn sense of loss. In these last few days Dan had gained so many new learnings that he would take with him unto his deathbed, but he also lost in some semblances. “I’m riding with Phil back home.” Dan said, the word  _ home  _ sticking unsatisfactorily in his throat. He used his same chastising tone that he had grown to use in replacement for his lifeless monotone. 

His mother gave him a quick, fleeting hug, short and bracing taking Dan by surprise. His mother was always affectionate and lively, but it was as if Dan had witnessed the life desaturating out of his mother. All of a sudden and not at all, it was as if the life was sucked out of her and she looked just her age, not bubbly and chittery as she usually was. “Goodbye, Daniel.” She whispered, and Dan tried to shut his eyes and in that moment of hushed goodbyes, he wanted so desperately everything to be alright.

Oh, and what constituted as a goodbye? Were any partings ever so good and not inherently bittersweet? Should Dan feel so good, leaving the place that touched the lips of his soul and became a second skin to him? 

 

The drive back to London was just as emotional but laden with tension Dan couldn’t put his finger on. He saw Phil and both of them looked like two lost souls. The car ride was their final destination, and from his small window of the world he watched his small town pass him bye, as he knew the next time he would visit would just be another journey to a memory. 

Dan could feel the unspoken words roll off of Phil’s phantom tongue like waves crashing against the shore. They were fifteen minutes away from the small town, fifteen minutes of silence together, wasted.

Dan could feel the terrible, horrible, know it all truth seeping into his veins where white noise used to be, cutting curtly into everything he had ever known and ever loved. “I really like you, Phil.” Dan admitted, and he saw the end of a beginning, the heavens and oceans and fields outside him passing him by, the truths of the universe greeting him in blessing. One kiss was nothing to Dan, it could have been another person on his mind with Phil just being a convenient set of lips, but the simple admission of feelings behind a kiss, it was something new.

Phil exhaled and kept his eyes steadily on the road. “I know.” Phil said, blinking quickly. “I like you a lot, Dan.” He said, as Dan saw it. Dan saw the moment of revelation, the moment of unraveling. 

 

All of it was starting to make sense, their midnight ramblings about existence, Phil’s utter and total belief that two people were only children of the stars before finding each other. Midweek plant shop dance parties and impromptu dinner dates. Falling in love under millions of trillions of stars – how is that not a miracle, that the heart falls in love with the head in some strangely sensible twist of fate?

In this moment there was no electrified, passion-fueled lust saying half true sentences in the secret of the night. There were just two boys in the harsh and unforgiving light of day sitting in a kind of cramped car.

Dan laughed in release of all the pressure he had on him in the last few days. He laughed, brilliant and jubilant and infinitely pleasant. It was that amount of joy and warmth that thawed the ice walls growing between them.

Phil smiled and laughed and loved all over. It was totally normal and totally divine, no kiss and tell. It was the totally boring and totally natural sensation of two people doing absolutely nothing. It’s hard for Dan to talk about the joys, because the longer he spends with Phil he learns that the joys were such an uneventful subject of pure bliss.

 

By the time that the sun had ascended overhead to the early, early afternoon, Dan and Phil pulled up to Dan’s apartment and never did Dan see his flat in the somber way that he did now. They stood outside for an eternity and Dan felt awful at the act of parting. He was just not ready for Phil to leave.

“Phil,” Dan began, as he tried to push the yearning and loving and hurt all over down to the depths of his soul. He could feel the heat rising in him and the tears making him feel a little too foolish for his liking. He didn’t want Phil to go. He was just not ready. He wasn’t ready for Phil to become another memory collecting in his hallway of hearts, gathering dust and cobwebs and smelling of sorrow. He wanted to say all of this, but Dan couldn’t feel his vocal chords verbalising what he wanted to say. All his head and heart was thinking was that he needed Phil to _ stay.  _ Hell, his brain was screaming the word over and over and over again. Phil needed to  _ stay. _

Dan smiles, cool and coy and sneering just as he was back when he first met Phil all those eternities ago. He tries to think with his head and not with his heart just as he always does. The elevator ride was long and terrible, and they both knew at one point they must say their goodbyes. Instead, as Dan always does, he stalls. Dan stalls, stalls, stalls. When he was in university he had become a professional at procrastination and he saw now that his skills had paid off, because he was using that to procrastinate at saying goodbye. “Don’t you want to see more of London before you go back?” 

Phil could see right through Dan. “Are you gonna be my tour guide?” He asked, and Dan smiled classically and foreboding and impeccably daring. Phil knows the answer before Dan ever says it.

Dan rolled his eyes. “Get in the car. We’re getting lunch.” He said, smiling over his shoulder as he deposited his bags right inside his apartment door.

* * *

Phil jutted his lower lip out at a scene considered grotesque only to him. “Why is everything in London so overpriced?” He asked, rolling around a blueberry muffin in his palm. Dan rolled his eyes and swiped the muffin away from Phil. Dan had taken Phil to the nicest, poshest cafe money could buy. He wasn’t sure why he was in such a mood to show off, but perhaps it was because this felt like the first proper date, and Dan wanted to do it right. Either way, Dan frequented the establishment often, preferring to read the daily news with a bagel and coffee to his right.

“Maybe everything where you’re from is just underpriced.” Dan teased as he looked around. No matter how much he hated to admit it, he was back home. He was back in his home turf. He took the muffin and tapped his credit card on the reader.

As they sat down in a secluded booth just for the two of them, Dan grinned at Phil. “You showed me your favourite cafes. It’s my turn now.” He said, setting down a tray of rolls and fresh fruit.

Phil took in the scenery and saw why Dan loved this place so. It was located in the heart of the city and yet found means to be so quiet indoors. It was utterly silent if not for the jazzy lofi background tunes and the everyday chatter of other's. On a rainy day, this could have been blissful.

The two of them went back to the simple ease that they shared when they were together, thinking and talking about everything and nothing. When the topic of Phil’s art exhibit came up however, Phil grew silent and reserved.

“Why do you get so awkward talking about your exhibit?” Dan asked softly, trying to needle and answer out of Phil.

Phil’s eyes dart away for a moment as he exhaled. “I’m being featured alongside some artists I have looked up to my whole life. What if I’m not good enough?” He asked.

 

Dan looked at Phil and he found himself back in his law firm's office talking to distraught men and women who were driven to divorce. They came from all walks of life, but they all had something in common – they fell in love once. Hell, they were so in love at one point that they got married with a service and all. Dan always saw himself as above such a menial task, but now he sees that they must stoop to his level to teach Dan the fundamentals of loving. Dan always thought of a weakness, another perk of his career. He couldn’t fathom how divorce lawyers got married, but he could see it all plain as day. He was taking things slow to avoid the problems he saw in his line of work, making sure he did all in his duty to do make sure his love of Phil didn’t sour with age.

Dan sees Phil and he also sees Phil showing the very tender parts of himself, his weaknesses and insecurities. Dan sees the reason people get married. In this moment Dan sees Phil and he knows that the boy in front of him could bring Dan to his knees. Phil could create a cosmo, birth a heaven. 

 

Dan thinks; have you seen that boy? He makes the  _ head _ bend over bridges to comply with his  _ heart _ .

 

Dan stares at Phil with so much love filling his veins. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Dan spilled everything marinating on his lips since the day he first met Phil. “I don’t know if you’re good enough for everyone, Phil. But you’re more than enough for me. You taught me so many things I couldn’t believe I spent my entire existence not knowing. If you’re more than enough for me, I hope that would be enough for you. You are the lake, the sky, the heart.”

Phil smiled, and Dan saw love in this lanky six foot tall artist sitting across from him in a coffee shop on just your average Friday afternoon.

  
  
  
  



	14. F word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the inspirational power couples come out to play. Dante and Ari. Elio and Oliver. Baz and Simon. Keith and Lance. Troye Sivan's musical stylings. Thank u for inspiring this chapter <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is my ABSOLUTE favourite, and I hope you enjoy reading it it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As I said in the summary, all of those beautiful power couples and the mediums they were portrayed on have inspired this chapter and what I have written so far. Have fun x

After a brief lunch wherein Dan realised more than he expected to learn about himself, Dan and Phil made their way to the Thames river where the main strip of tourism took place on a day to day basis. “How have you never gotten the full tourist experience?” Dan mused with a yawn. He wasn’t able to sleep well last night, his mind too caught up and too entangled in the act of leaving.

Phil chuckled surreptitiously. “Well of course I’ve been to London! You know, for work or to visit the odd aunt that came into strangely large amounts of money. I’ve been to  _ London  _ before, but never of my own volition.” He replied with a nonchalant shrug.

Dan laughed at the nonsensical sense that Phil tried to divine. The early morning sun had broken and made way for the hot afternoon sun which was beating down on them with a vengeance. 

When the two of them reached the London eye, Phil’s eyes brightened. “Look!” He pointed out, motioning towards the looming ferris wheel. He looked jubilant as Phil dragged Dan to the front. Dan so desperately wanted to indulge in Phil’s wish, but he had always been just a bit hesitant around heights. 

Instead of protesting, Dan took a deep breath. In three days the two of them would go back to business as usual, in three days he would feel the white noise flow back into his veins as if directly from an IV. In three days, Phil would be a lifetime away. Today, today, he would do what he had been doing since the start of this getaway. Today he would throw caution to the wind and lash out with sparks of personality and vivacious light with wild and reckless abandon. Instead of being hesitant, Dan just smiled. He smiled longfully and lengthy and dripping in synthetic. 

 

“Okay.” Dan relented, reiterating the notion to himself over Phil. “Okay. Let’s do it!” He exclaimed, grabbing hold of Phil’s hand and making their way over to the line, with a foolish insolent grin plastered on his face.

The ascent into the air was slow, but it was steady. It made Dan feel a little light headed, and even if he knew it was foolish since they weren’t going  _ that  _ high up into the air, it still made his resistance even stronger. Dan always hated heights, and he always hated not being tethered to the ground and not having a control on where he was going. While Dan was busy feeling his heart pound a million miles a minute, Phil looked outside with what could only be described as wild eyes. 

“It’s beautiful.” Phil breathed, looking at Dan and then turning back to relish in the sight. The two of them pooled their money for a private pod, and while at the time Dan considered the cost frivolous, he definitely saw that it was the right decision. 

“Beautiful like you.” Phil added. For all Dan knew, Phil could have been screaming those words or whispering softly. Either way, it was nowhere near the firefight taking place in the depths of his heart. Dan’s fleeting fears about being at such a high altitude were instantly diminished, and all of a sudden Dan could think with abject clarity. 

Dan takes a step towards Phil, a step into the void and into oblivion. Phil clutches Dan’s hand and they look at each other with finality, as if their tempestuous tango had come to a close. 

No more running. No more dancing around each other. No more unspoken promises muttered under the cloak of the night, just to be swept aside in the harsh light of day.

 

As they lean closer to each other, Dan knows that Phil’s very being was a gift all on it’s own. Phil was infinitely, infinitely, so much better than Dan. But Dan, Dan brought out the best in Phil time and time again.

This was the eternity, the blip in solar spectrum, that Dan had been waiting for. 

This makes Dan think of first kisses. He thinks of what a high accord they’re held to, but Dan thinks now that maybe they’re wrong. Maybe the kisses that matter are the kisses that are so full, so self-encompassing, that these kisses feel like the first. 

 

For Dan, it will always go back to him and Phil and the one time they kissed on the London eye.

* * *

 

In every inch where light could get in, in every crevice of Dan’s soul, he felt lightweight. It was as if Dan had been reborn and was now experiencing life with new eyes. It appeared that Phil felt the same way as well, garnering a newfound confidence after such a fearsome kiss. Phil finally managed to work up the courage and he held Dan’s hand tightly for the rest of the day. Dan thought of everything they did together, and each thing was monumental in it’s own right, because while nothing had ever felt so true to themselves while holding each other’s hands, the two boys were deathly afraid of being attack just for a public display of affection. The hand hold was shy and was mostly shielded from the public eye, but the very fact that they were tethered together was  _ enough.  _ They held hands all the way back from the London Eye and all whilst they went window shopping. On the way riding the tube back home, Dan and Phil guided each other home like two lost souls.

Walking up the stairs and unlocking the door with Phil Lester at his side felt too weird and yet too real, because every night Dan had unlocked his door and performed this charade was enacted alone and sleepily after a long day of work. The very last time Dan unlocked his front door to step inside, he was just earlier shocked at the splendor of the stars he saw before entering the building. Now, Dan was going back home with so many things he would have never imagined even learning or obtaining. Dan was with Phil, this eccentric, efflorescent, wildly talented  and ferociously soft human being. Being with Phil now felt like a giant leap of faith for Dan.

As the door clicked open, there was a floodgate of emotions pouring out of Dan. The day had done the absolute most to them, and now the sun dipped low into the horizon. Another day ended while a new one crept up on them. Phil took a look around and yawned. Guess I better be going.” Phil said, his voice sounding more somber and more morose than usual.

 

Dan didn’t want Phil to go yet. The earlier kiss didn’t give confidence to only Phil. Dan looks at Phil and kisses him as if it was the last time. For all they know, it could very well be the last time that they ever see eachother again. They knew their paths would cross, but not like this. Dan was terrified Phil would introduce Dan as merely a  _ friend _ , as if all of their escapades together were just two friends being friends. Dan wouldn’t be able to live with himself if such a thing happened, being swept under the rug like that. 

Phil looks at Dan with a smile playing on his lips as he kisses back harder. Dan should have known that this was how making out with Phil Lester would be like. He should have known that it surmounted to complete and utter surrender.

 

Dan should have known, he should have known. Dan should have known better but Phil Lester. Phil  _ fucking  _ Lester, he kills everything Dan tries to think and he kills everything Dan tries to say before Dan even says it.

_ Phil Lester _ . It’s the only thing that Dan thinks all the way from the living room to the bedroom. If it were up to Dan, he would have it that him and Phil lay here for all eternity. But it was never up to Dan, it was up to the universe and fate and anyone and anything  _ but  _ Dan.

 

As they lay down, tears pricked at Dan’s eyes. He could only form one concrete thought from under the screaming of Phil Lester’s name. “ _ Stay.”  _ Dan croaked out, looking directly into the oblivion of Phil’s eyes, the oblivion that had taken Dan under without warning and without mercy.

Phil looks at Dan with the softest smile God bestowed upon man as he kisses Dan on his jawline. “ _ Forever _ .” 

* * *

 

Dan wakes an hour before Dan; in that beautiful hour of twilight where the day meets the night while the world sleeps under the covers.Out of the corner of his eyes, Dan sees the crystal blue of Phil’s eyes in stark contrast to his porcelain skin.

“How long have you been up?” Dan asked, pulling the duvet closer to his bare chest/ 

Phil wrinkles his nose and smiles, scooting closer to Dan. “Long enough.” He replied with a shrug. “Hey! I have a question for you.” Phil adds, whisper shouting quietly.

“What is it?” Dan asks, rolling over on his side to meet Phil. They’re so near to each other, their noses are practically overlapping.

“Are you afraid of anything?” Phil asked, and it sounded like a different person from a different time. “I mean, you’re  _ Dan Howell.  _ I’ve never seen you get afraid of anything before.”

If the two of them were having lunch in a cafe surrounded by lush green plants and bathing in sunlight and cappuccinos, Dan would have laughed, truly and joyously but the question would have haunted him later in the evening when he was alone. Dan would have laughed, he would have stared at the rip in Phil’s skinny jeans and said;  _ wasps, heights, injections.  _ But they weren’t in a lush green cafe. And Phil’s skinny jeans were on Dan’s bedroom floor. 

Phil instantly noticed how Dan’s face fell, and he offered Dan a hopeful smile. “If you tell me what you’re afraid of, I’ll tell you why I don’t like talking about my art exhibit.” Phil admitted.

Dan rolled his eyes. “You already told me why.” He replied, and he heard Phil’s shallow breath heave in steady, warm, continuity. Had he ever had anyone in this bed with him before?

“There’s more.” Phil replied, looking up at Dan.”

 

Dan fell silent. “I’m afraid of myself.” 

Dan tried to divine the fallacy in what he just admitted to Phil, but he knew that what he had just said was totally, utterly, true. 

Phil looked at Dan and shook his head defiantly. “I don’t think you’re afraid of yourself. I think you don’t know who you are, and you’re afraid of what you don’t know.” 

Dan looked at Phil, and he knew that his eyes carried the same sadness that his mother held in her eyes as well. The kind of sadness that couldn’t be washed away by mint chocolate chip ice cream and a phone call to home. “I’m afraid of what will happen to us.”

Phil looked at Dan, and he didn’t miss a beat as a boyish grin was instantly plastered on his face. “I’m not afraid of what will happen to us, because I know exactly what will happen. I’ll leave tonight and  we’ll begin a long but difficult long distance relationship. Eventually it will become a battle of wit and one of us will break and realise that we can’t live without each other, and we’ll move into a small town where two roads meet and nobody knows who we are. We’ll get our happily ever after, because Lord knows we deserve one.”

 

Dan was left stunned for a moment, before he looked at Phil with a grin. “I can live without you.” Dan replies haughtily, lying through his teeth. He wants to believe it’s true, because he had spent the last twenty seven years of his life without Phil.”

Phil smiles and shakes his head. Phil stares at Dan incessantly and incredulously and definitively. Phil kisses Dan again, slow and sweet and it makes Dan feel like a boy in his youth.

Maybe Dan’s youth had been a state of mind all this time.

“I can’t.”

* * *

When they finish the whims of symphonies that urge Dan to act upon, they toss and turn as the sun begins its ascent. “Are you gonna tell me the real reason why you don’t like talking about your art exhibit now?” Dan asked, eyes looking up at the endless expanse of darkness on the ceiling. 

“You told me why yourself.” Phil replies. “I don’t like talking about it because I’m afraid of myself, too.”

Dan shakes his head. “I think maybe all of us are scared of who we are. That’s why we turn to other people for love, because they find all of the things we hate about ourselves and find a reason to love them.”

 

“Maybe I’m scared of forever.” Phil admits.

“Forever?”

Phil heaves a heavy sigh. “This is my first big art exhibit and I’m already thirty one. Do I really want to be doing this forever?”

He could hear the dichotomy warring in Phil’s mind. While Dan had never any doubts about where he was heading in life career wise, he could feel the uncertainty in Phil’s veins as if they were his own. “I think you’re too caught up in forever.” Dan responded, rolling over to his side to look out at the rising sun. The world was waking up again, and so were they. His potted plant near his windowsill had wilted.

“I know.” Phil replied earnestly. “But aren’t you thinking of forever, too?”

Dan thought about that. “No. My whole life was built upon me being a lawyer. Now that I’ve gotten to the point I had always wanted to be, I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ve got forever to figure out forever.”

 

Dan still thinks forever is far too big of a concept, but he lets himself think about it for a while more. Dan lets himself think of forever. A forever home. A forever far into the future. A forever, a forever with Phil in it.


	15. Act of Leaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is around the time where i would situate the intermission! in a few days we'll start ramping up for the second act/plot point of the story. dan and phil's story has revolved around this seemingly endless summer and now with an end, i've got lots more in store! (don't worry tho aahh its not a sequel! i'll continue posting chapters here)  
> updates will be just as frequent as always <3 thanks for sticking with me love u loads

“Can we just stay here?” Phil whispered, tracing small circles on Dan’s bare chest.

Dan needed to get back to work, he could feel the deadlines and the stress creeping up on him ever so slightly. He needed to rip off the bandaid, he needed to make peace with his past. 

Theoretically, Phil could stay for another day, but what good would that do both of them? Another day of sunlight and peace, but another day wasted. Another day where Dan could be in the courtroom or drafting essays, or Phil could be mixing mediums and talking to Becca in the plant shop.

“We both know you need to leave today.” Dan said with finality, his voice cold and detached and sounding like the robot in his heart that he had grown to fear.

“I don’t want to leave today.” Phil parroted, and his voice sounded small and soft and it sounded like heaven. 

Dan could feel tears prick at the corners of his eyes. How did this one strange artist worm his way into Dan’s life as if he had been there all along? As if he had  _ belonged  _ there all along? How could Dan go from one day thinking he’ll meet his wife at the altar to dreaming of the day he would tell his mom he’s  _ gay _ ?

Dan didn’t even know if he was gay. He didn’t know if he liked boys, or if he liked girls, or if he likes boys and girls. All he knew was that he liked Phil. All he knew was that he  _ loved  _ Phil.

And that was enough. Maybe in a few days he’ll realise that would never be enough to sustain a healthy relationship, but in this time period where there seems to be no repercussions, this was enough. Phil being here, when just a month ago he didn’t even know who Phil Lester was, he knew that it was enough.

Dan didn’t even know if Phil loved him back. For all Dan knew, he was just a pretty face to Phil for the time being. Maybe when they’re a city away they’ll lose contact. They’ll lose  _ this.  _ Dan knew that maybe Phil didn’t even love him, but that didn’t matter. Dan was drawn to Phil, drawn to how Phil saw a person capable of loving and not a cynical lawyer that separated children from their fathers. Phil saw someone deserving and worthy of love. Phil saw  _ Dan,  _ not Daniel.

 

Dan planted a kiss on Phil’s cheek. It still didn’t feel real, as if they were living in an altered reality. “You won’t be leaving. You’ll be back.”

“The next time I see you is in three weeks. I fell in love with you in three weeks.” Phil whispered softly.

“Three weeks will go by so fast. Three weeks is-” Dan stopped mid sentence. “Did you say that you love me?”

Phil sat up and stared Dan in the eye. “Well, do you love me back?” He asked sheepishly.

 

Dan huffed. “Phil, I would beat you in a contest to see who lost more sleep over the other. I’ve spent so many nights debating whether you truly loved me or not. I was wondering if you loved me just now.”

Phil looked at Dan, and he could feel the heat rising to his cheeks. “Dan Howell. I love you, Dan Howell.”

 

Dan looks at Phil as if he’s all the stars in the sky. Suddenly, all the words that stuck to his mouth and all the emotions he could never find words for felt crystal clear. “In this big expanse universe that has people experiencing the first day of their life, the last day of their life, the worst day of their life, and the best day of their life, we are still here.” Dan whispers, trying to choose his words delicately.

“What scares me is that we only know we’re having the best days and the worst days of our life after they are through. What scares me is how long I spend thinking that  _ I must remember this _ because if I forget this moment I will hate myself for all eternity.

I hate myself anyways, so might as well forget. I spend too much time remembering to remember the moment that in turn I forget.” Dan is trying to use the words he never uses, he’s trying above all, for Phil to  _ understand.  _

“You lit a fire under me but I hate fires I hate getting burned and yet I allowed you to do so. I let you into my life to channel the hurting the hating and the healing all over.

The concept is this:

I can never find any fault in you because you fly away from my grasp before I can even tell you that I loved you all along. But you’re here now. And I love you, Phil. I love you. I love you.”

 

“That’s so poetic.” Phil said with a shy laugh. “You could have been a writer, you know.”

Dan chuckled. “I wanted to be a writer a long time ago. I never had any confidence in myself to try. Maybe I would have been a writer, who knows. Lawyers are just boring writers.”

“What a cliche we would have been.” Phil mused. “The writer and the artist power couple.”

Dan laughed again, snuggling closer to Phil. “Cliches are part of stories. Everyone has a story, even if it’s cliche.”

“Do we have a story?” Phil asked. 

“We of all people have a story! The artist and the writer that never was.” Dan exclaimed. 

 

Phil laughed, halfway between a choked up sob and a laugh of love and light. “I don’t want to cry.” Phil whispered softly. 

They lay back down and looked at the ceiling. Oh how Dan wished they were staring up at stars. “Then don’t cry. We can just lay here. Not forever. Just for now.”

* * *

 

Like all rule following dutiful citizens of society, Dan and Phil knew they had to get back to their everyday lives. They knew all too well that they were stretching out the inevitable, the goodbye. Dan had always found it so easy to say goodbye, because he knew that there was no use getting attached to another human being. For the most part his existence was easy. He lived a soft life of peacefully knowing that he could never get his heart broken unless he let others in.

Dan was always so sure of his future. If clairvoyance was real, he was the first culprit. Dan always knew what he wanted in life, and Phil made him so unsure it gave him second thoughts. Was it worth loving Phil, when you couldn’t see the end of what you have done? Was it worth loving Phil, when every bone in your body was so tired of the hurting? Was the few short moments of bliss upon bliss worth it when you could feel the conservative gaze of those before Dan looking upon him in reckoning.

 

“It’s not forever. Just for now.” Dan whispered, reassurance for the both of them. Dan could feel his soul experiencing a different kind of reawakening. 

If there was anything that Dan learnt over this summer, it was that you couldn't run away from the inevitable. You can’t run away from that presentation you loathe to give, or the unspeakable goodbye.

The sun begins to rise higher and hotter overhead. By the time Phil made it back to their sleepy town a world away they would be staring at the same stars. Sweat beads down Dan’s temples as Phil presses a soft kiss on Dan’s cheek. “See you soon, Daniel.” He said with a smile.

Phil gets in the car, and Dan tries to tear his gaze away but he can’t.

He can’t tear his gaze away from the boy who broke his heart by leaving. Dan can’t look away from this crazy foolish and caring and kind individual who he had learned to love like another half of his soul. He can’t bear to look at the only person he’s certain knows Dan for who he is, but Dan can’t look away. Dan just loves Phil too much.

Instead, Dan watches the world pass him by on a summer’s day in his lovestruck daze.

 

Dan enters the house a few short moments later, and the white noise threatens to choke him. It would be so easy, to just swallow the last few weeks and let himself go back to the same old routine. Instead of going back to his old self, he pushes the curtain and lets the bright light in. He plays loud, peaceful music that was his top suggestion on his Spotify daily mix. The atmosphere makes him feel different and empty.

He sprays his apartment with an unopened room spray he got for his birthday. It smells like citrus and liquid sunshine.

 

Dan turns on his laptop and a million email notifications pop up, marked  _ urgent _ and they all flood his inbox. Dan ignores them all and goes on Amazon to buy a bunch of small oddities. Things he had always wanted to buy but never had the time nor motivation to purchase. 

A bar of soap that smells of milk and honey. That smells of home.

A box of chamomile tea. (Dan never liked the green tea they serve in the office. Phil always put two sugars in his chamomile tea.)

Fairy lights that remind him of late night Netflix sessions. It’s starting to feel a lot like home.

 

After taking a reluctant shower and washing Phil’s touch out from under his skin, Dan goes into town and tries to locate the plant shop. As he blends into the crowd, Dan sees the white noise people among them all. They look worse for wear and always grey. They listen to music, but do they  _ listen _ ? They’re speaking rapidly on the phone and the emotion doesn’t register in they eyes. They need a day off, but they love the days of work. They make fleeting eye contact with Dan and it scares him. It’s like looking into a foggy mirror. Dan walks quicker into the plant shop he always runs into but never goes into.

The plant shop was located across the street from a ramen shop that all his coworkers rave about. As he opens the door there’s a girl, and she looks fresh out of high school and is wearing a NASA shirt. Her name tag reads  _ Seito  _ and she’s looking at the boy. Dan feels invisible in this moment so clearly between the two of them. “Hey, Konoha! Come here for a sec.” She said, hailing the boy down.

Dan wanders to the far side of the plant shop and his legs instantly find the Japanese imports. He hears Phil’s voice at the back of his mind while Seito and Konoha speak of  _ Mars  _ and  _ Astronauts.  _

Two other girls walk in. One of them has rose gold hair that looks freshly dyed. Her roots haven’t started to show yet. She’s wearing a bright yellow jacket and has creamy caramel coloured eyes. She looks hauntingly beautiful. The other girl trails behind the one with rose gold hair. She has pale almond skin and her hair is coily and tied into a high bun. Her eyes are green but her features are nowhere near caucasian. They’re an attractive pair of girls, and they look like they can take on the world.

 

“Florence.” The girl with pink hair says. “Are these the right carnations for Edison?” She asks, holding a precarious potted plant.

The girl with green eyes, Florence. She nods. “Edison will love-hate those. That’s what we’re going for.” She said with a sly smile. “Can we go back to the part where you were talking about how your name was  _ Cassiopeia? _ ” 

Florence rests her head in the crook of the other girl’s neck. “You really thought my whole name was Cassie? You think so little of me, Florence.” Cassie replied, planting a kiss on Florence’s cheek.

Dan thinks of his conversation with Phil earlier. How he always wanted to be a writer but he never had any self confidence. Maybe being a writer is all about observation. Everyone has a story. He wonders how long Seito and Konoha have been together, or how long Florence and Cassie have been together.

 

Everyone has a story, and Phil seems to be everywhere today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: for my english short story project last year i had to write a story revolving around japanese culture. i wrote about seito who worked at a plant shop who met the eclectic konoha. the title of the story was seito and her konoha, which meant "the stars and her plants" in english. seito was a plant girl who dreamed of going to the stars. konoha was a space boy who dreamed of the earth. they're just immigrants from immigrant families trying to leave a mark on the world.  
> despite getting quite a low grade on that paper for being "too creative", i couldn't get their story out of my mind.  
> cassie and florence are my nanowrimo wlw babies and i hope you enjoyed their cameo as well. florence is a writer whose scared of her own heart (sounds familiar?) and cassie is this rich kid know it all whose creative and jubilant and she's kind of a mess. they meet at a plant shop because cassie keeps talking the cashier's ear off and florence is one curious kid. they kiss on the curb after a pop punk warehouse concert.   
> what can i say? my best stories start in plant shops :^)

**Author's Note:**

> I have been planning this story for a whole year. I give you nothing but my love, and thank you for taking time out of your day to read this


End file.
